EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGEESS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



ELEMENTARY PHYSIOGRAPHY 

Treated Experimentally 

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ADVANCED PHYSIOGRAPHY 

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EDUCATION 

AND 

SOCIAL PROGRESS 



BY 

ALEXANDEE MORGAN 

M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S.E. 

PEINCIPAL OF THE PROVINCIAL TRAINING COLLEGE, EDINBUEGH 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 

1916 

All rights reterved. 



.M6 






PREFACE 

This is the age of the Social question. At no previous 
time have the needs and problems of society been 
more keenly felt or more earnestly faced. Our social 
problems are spiritual and ethical as well as economic. 
In dealing with them two objects must always be 
kept in view: one is the improvement of the economic 
conditions of the people, and the other, and no less 
important, the improvement of personal character. 
Social workers have been slow to realise that pre- 
vention is better than cure, and that the child is the 
centre of the social problem and our strong hope of 
its ultimate solution. We have been devoting too 
much attention to adults and too little to the young. 
The words of an old writer contain much wisdom : 
' Barren land should not be cultivated, nor even once 
ploughed ' ; or, as a modern writer even more pointedly 
puts it, ' Too much money is spent upon the diseased 
tree, not enough upon the growing twig.' 

Let us honestly face the fact that we cannot do 
much to modify the hves and characters of the adults 
of the community who have gone astray, but we can 
do a great deal to bring physical, mental, and moral 
health into the lives of the children, and to give scope 
to their infinite potentialities for the good of the 
nation. Think of the fifteen million children in the 



vi PREFACE 

country under fourteen years of age. The whole 
gamut of human capacity must be represented there, 
and lying latent in them is the collective power, if 
properly developed, to make our country the happiest 
and most prosperous of nations. Hence workers for 
social amelioration are concentrating their energies 
more on the training and education of the child than 
on any other form of social endeavour. 

Education, not in the old narrow sense of school 
teaching, but as comprising all the forces that develop 
the powers and form the minds and characters of the 
young, is now recognised as the most important 
method of social intervention, and the most powerful 
means by which democracy can secure the realisation 
of its ideals. As a consequence, there is growing up 
a new body of educational literature less specialised 
in substance and less narrow in aim and interest than 
that which has hitherto been common. It is the aim 
of this volume to present some of those wider aspects 
of education, and to show the part that education, 
properly interpreted and exercised, may play in 
removing the barriers to social progress, and in im- 
proving the condition of the whole body pohtic. 

I desire to acknowledge my great indebtedness 
to my colleague Mr. James Drever, M.A., B.Sc, 
Lecturer in Education, Edinburgh University, for 
revising the proofs and making many valuable sug- 
gestions in connection with them. 

ALEX. MORGAN. 

Edinburgh, 

November I, 1915. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. Social Pathology 

II. Imperfect Remedies of Social Diseases . 

III. The Causes of Social Diseases — Heredity 

IV. The Causes of Social Diseases — Environment 
V. The Causes of Social Diseases — Defective 

Education .... 

VI. The Conditions of Social Progress 

VII. Education and Heredity. 

VIII. Education and Environment . 

IX. Education and Practical Life. 

X. Education and Practical Life — Practical 

Teaching in the Primary School 

XL Education and Practical Life — Pre-Trade 

Education .... 

XII. Further Education . 

XIII. Further Education (continued) 

XIV. Children under School Age . 
XV. Education and Public Health 

XVI. Education and Public Health (continued) 

XVII. Education and Public Health (continued) 

XVni. Education of Defective Children . 

XIX. Education of Defective Children (continued 

XX. Wider Use of School Plant . 

XXI. Teachers and Social Progress. 

XXII. Conclusion .... 



Index 



PAGE 
1 

11 

21 

28 

42 
54 
61 
76 
87 

96 

107 
122 
134 
148 
166 
182 
196 
208 
217 
227 
237 
243 

249 



EDUCATION AND SOCIAL 
PROGRESS 



CHAPTER I 



SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 



Until recent times there was a tendency, in Western 
nations at least, to emphasise the rights of the 
individual as against the rights of the community, 
and to regard the State as existing solely for the 
interests of its individual members. The laissez- 
faire doctrines of the last two centuries exaggerated 
unduly the importance of the individual, and the 
danger of interfering with his rights and liberties. 
Modern social philosophy is opposed to these views. 
Fouillee correctly represents the opinions of the present 
time when he says : ' The danger that, above all others, 
a democratic nation must avoid is the disintegration 
of society into units with no immediate concern but 
self-interest, into individuals to whom social duties 
and bonds are gradually ceasing to appeal.' ^ 

1 Education Jrom a National Standpoint, p. 4, by Alfred Fouillee. 
(International Education Series.) 

B 



*> 



2 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Individualistic theories if carried to their logical 
development would lead to the destruction of the 
State. Hence at the present moment there is a 
return to something like the old Greek ideal of citizen- 
ship, that it is the office of a good citizen to serve 
the State, to live and, if need be, to die for the State, 
whose duty it is on the other hand to protect its 
citizens and to equip them for social service in which 
they develop their highest individuality. The modern 
biological conception of society as an organism, the 
living cells of which are the individual members, is 
changing the old-time demand for individual liberty to 
a demand for social solidarity. We prosper only by the 
welfare of the whole, and if there is disease or degenera- 
tion in any part, the entire community offers thereby. 
' If one member suffers all the members suffer with 
it.' Hence those interested in social welfare are 
examining the ills of society at the present time with 
microscopic intensity. There never was a time when 
there was so much social endeavour, or when so many 
minds were engaged in examining our social ills, 
and in planning and working out schemes for their 
remedy. As a consequence, we know infinitely more 
than even our parents did about the problems of 
humanity, and, through the practical application of 
knowledge fast accumulating, we may confidently 
hope that a solution of the problems will be found. 
There is no reason in the nature of things why society 
should be oppressed for ever by the ills that at present 
afflict it. If we set ourselves earnestly to the task, 



SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 3 

it is within our power greatly to reduce, if not entirely 
to remove, them. What we have to do is to study with 
patience the symptoms and causes of the national 
malaise, and then to apply the appropriate remedies. 
It is not necessary in a general treatise such as 
this to give a minute and exhaustive analysis of the 
pathological conditions of society. They are chiefly 
three : poverty, vice and crime, and parasitism and 
the exploitation of the weak by the strong. 

Poverty 

Poverty is one of the commonest forms of social 
disease and one of the chief obstacles to social progress. 
Whether we advocate the entire abolition of child 
labour, the extension of the period of compulsory 
education, the improvement of housing, or any other 
proposal calculated to ameliorate the condition of 
the people, we are met at every turn by the same 
objection — the inability of a portion of the community 
to bear the increased cost. Our present economic 
and social conditions are producing an unending 
supply of broken and destitute people who are always 
within measurable reach of want, who suffer in body 
and in mind from lack of the necessaries of life, and 
are unable to lead healthy and useful lives. 

Few reahse the extent to which our country is 
suffering from this disease. Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree 
in his work on ' Poverty ' makes an exhaustive study 
of the economic conditions of York, and gives figures 
which show that ten per cent, of the population of 

B 2 



4 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

the city are very poor. Mr. Charles Booth in ' Life 
and Labour of the People in London ' shows that 
twelve per cent, of the people are in poverty. The 
recent investigations made by the Royal Commission 
on the Poor Laws reveal that over two millions of 
different persons are granted parochial relief every 
year, the expenditure for this purpose in England 
alone being £15,000,000 a year, and in Scotland 
£1,286,000, or altogether an average of 5s. 6c/. per head 
of the population of the United Kingdom — about the 
same as we spend on education} In addition to this 
at least nine millions sterling are expended in relieving 
poverty each year by public and private charities 
throughout the United Kingdom. The sum disbursed 
by charities in Edinburgh amounts to the large total 
of £290,000 a year, and from the Poor Rates £95,000. 
From figures such as these it is unfortunately but 
too plain that there are at all times within the United 
Kingdom between three and four million people of 
all ages on the borderland of destitution. The 
sufferings of these people have been thus described 
in a recent study (' Poverty,' by Robert Hunter) : 
' As a class they have the longest hours of work, they 
have the lowest pay ; they have competition of the 
severest kind to face ; they are oppressed by sweating 
methods ; their employment is irregular ; their 
tenements are the most insanitary, and their rents 



1 Mr. Rowntree shows that of the total expenditure of the city of 
York, 16 per cent, is spent on pauperism, 7 per cent, in dealing with 
•rime, and 12 per cent, on education. 



SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 5 

relatively the highest that any class pay ; the prices 
for food and fuel are exorbitant, because they must 
buy in small quantities ; when they find it necessary 
to go into debt they are fleeced by loan sharks ; they 
are most often ill ; they bear the burden of more 
deaths than any other class ; and being without 
savings they are in actual distress as soon as they are 
unable to work, or as soon as they are unemployed 
as a result of economic or other causes.' 

The poverty of our country districts is a very 
different thing from the congested poverty of our large 
towns, where it withdraws itself into the social swamps 
called slums. The condition of the slum-dweller is 
truly described by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in their 
recent work on ' The Prevention of Destitution.' 
' Destitution in a densely-crowded modern city means, 
as all experience shows, not only oncoming disease 
and premature death from continued privation, but 
also, in the great majority of cases, the degradation 
of the soul. Massed in mean streets, working in 
sweating dens, or picking up a precarious livelihood 
by casual jobs ; living by day and by night in over- 
crowded one-room tenements through months of 
chronic unemployment or persistent under-employ- 
ment ; infants and children, boys and girls, men 
and women, together find themselves subjected — in 
an atmosphere of drinking, begging, cringing, and 
lying — to unspeakable temptations to which it is 
practically inevitable that they should in different 
degrees succumb, and in which strength and purity 



6 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

of character are irretrievably lost. Anyone acquainted 
with the sights and sounds and smells of the quarters 
of great cities in which destitution is widely prevalent 
— especially anyone conversant with the life -histories 
of families below the " Poverty Line " — learns to 
recognise a sort of moral malaria which undermines 
the spiritual vitality of those subjected to its baleful 
influence, and, whilst here and there a moral genius 
may survive, saddened but otherwise unscathed, 
gradually submerges the mass of each generation, as 
it grows up, in coarseness and bestiality, apathy and 
cynical scepticism of every kind.' 

And what of the children of the slums, the innocent 
victims, as Hall Caine says, of the social maelstrom ? 

Is this a holy thing to see 

In a rich and fruitful land, 
Babes reduced to misery, 

Fed with cold and usurous hand ? 



And their sun doth never shine, 

And their fields are bleak and bare, 

And their ways are filled with thorns : 
It is eternal winter there. 

For where'er the sun doth shiue, 
And where'er the rain does fall. 

Babes should never hunger there 
Nor poverty the mind appal.^ 

In the name of our humanity let us do what is in 
our power to remove, as far as may be, the heavy 

1 WiUiam Blake. 



SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 7 

handicap on their young Hves, and to rescue them 
from the influences of their surroundings of poverty 
and crime. 

We have only referred as yet to the three or four 
millions of our population in actual poverty. Great as 
their number is, it is small compared with those who 
live on the border line of poverty, always within measur- 
able reach of starvation, and in a condition fluctuating 
between want and the fear of want. Twelve or 
thirteen millions ^ not actually overtaken by poverty 
have their lives overshadowed by a bitter and relent- 
less struggle for the means of subsistence for themselves 
and those dependent on them. When all is well they 
may be able to keep the woK from the door, but they 
know that he is waiting to enter the moment there 
is sickness, or accident, or depression in trade. Some- 
thing is wrong with a civilisation in which nearly 
a fourth of the people live, as in this country, below 
the level of fairly comfortable subsistence. 

Vice and Crime 

On the prevalence of vice and crime as a social 
disease there is no need for us to dwell. ' Sin is the 
longest, heaviest drift in human history. . . . Men 
have reared against it government, education, philo- 
sophy, system after system of religion. But sin 
has overwhelmed them all.' So writes Dr. George 
Adam Smith, Principal of Aberdeen University. 

* See Poverty, by W. Reason, M.A., pp. 12-41. (Headley Bros.) 



8 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

About a million of our population are committed to 
trial every year for criminal offences great and small, 
and more than haK of these, in spite of our prisons 
and penal code, return to their careers of wrongdoing. 
Our annual drink bill is £161,000,000, and betting 
and other forms of gambling are indulged in by vast 
numbers of our population. If these two vices alone 
could be removed a vast number of families would 
at once rise from poverty into the ranks of those Hving 
in comfort, and rearing families well clothed and 
AveU fed. 

Exploitation and Parasitism 

Exploitation is a common process both in the 
natural and the economic world. Natural selection 
and evolution are one long series of exploitations. 
So too in human society, so long as men are regarded 
as a means of production and of money making, and 
not primarily as spiritual beings wdth infinite 
potentialities, on the cultivation of which eternal 
issues depend, so long will the strong and intelligent 
prey upon the weak and ignorant and take advantage 
of them. This runs all through history. When Plato 
planned his Republic and Aristotle his ideal City-State, 
they took for granted that the educated citizens 
should be supported by the rest of the population. 
When in the Middle Ages a leisured class made up of 
the nobility and the cultured arose, it was natural in 
the existing conditions for its members to assume 
that they should be supported by the labour of the 



SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 9 

masses. And even when, in more recent times, the 
wage system replaced the various forms of feudal 
slavery the spirit of exploitation remained. 

In modern times exploitation takes new forms — 
industrial concerns run solely for profit, sweating at 
the expense of the health and happiness generally 
of women and juvenile workers, and idleness preying 
on the industry of others and yielding no service 
to society in return. No community can afford to 
support permanently a mass of social parasites — 
the unemployed rich and idlers of every class, the 
pauper, the tramp, the criminal — all, in short, who 
are supported by the industry of the rest of the popula- 
tion and add nothing themselves to the sum total of 
achievement, whether in the realm of industry and 
commerce, or art and science, or morals and religion. 
Mankind is born to labour, and if society would rid 
itself of this form of disease it must put inflexibly 
into force the Scriptural injunction that 'if any will 
not work neither shall he eat.' 

If we consider the prodigious waste of work and 
life and the loss of spiritual power to the world by the 
diseases of society, we cannot fail to be impressed by 
the urgent need to find and apply a remedy for them. 
They are a barrier to social progress, they drag down 
the national life. At present only part of the energies 
of the nation are available. We are handicapped 
like the builders of the waUs of Jerusalem, everyone 
of whom ' with one of his hands wrought in the work, 



10 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

and with the other held a weapon ' to ward off the 
enemies of the nation. We are within the mark if 
we say that in our islands a quarter of a million of 
the adult population is supported entirely by the 
community, and that four times that number is 
supported partly by it. These million and a quarter 
represent a loss of productive power to the nation 
of at least twenty-five million pounds per annum. 
The criminal classes represent an equal loss of 
productive power. Moreover, the money value of 
the products of society consumed by all these amounts 
to about the same as the productive power withheld 
— ^namely, fifty million pounds. Further, to complete 
our computation we must remember that this mass 
of defective society requires for its support or restraint 
a vast series of contrivances and institutions — asylums, 
workhouses, hospitals, courts of law, reformatories, 
prisons — all in an economic sense non-producing. 
In money terms these counterpoises to the defective, 
dependent, and criminal sections of the community 
equal all the other sums put together.^ If we estimate 
the annual pecuniary burden caused by the social 
diseases of the nation at two hundred million pounds, 
we shall not rate it too highly — truly ' an arithmetic 
of woe.' But if we further estimate it in terms of 
human misery and suffering, mutilated character, 
and destruction of spiritual power, the loss to the 
nation is appalling. 

1 See Destitution, Can we erid it? p. 8, by Rev. Henry Carter. 
(London : J. J. Stark.) 



CHAPTER II 

IMPERFECT REMEDIES OF SOCIAL DISEASES 

A DESIRE for the alleviation of the ills of society is 
moving all ranks and conditions of men. The practical 
question that faces every earnest mind is : what can 
the nation do to prevent the continuance of the 
discreditable and blighting state of affairs which 
has just been described ? Society has as yet 
seriously tried but two remedies — deterrence and 
relief ; and the result has been a complete failure to 
remove, or even greatly lessen, our social ills. 

Until the present generation our main remedy 
for crime has been the prison. Recent investigations 
have shown that as a deterrent from crime the influence 
of imprisonment has been greatly over-estimated. 
It is calculated that about seventy per cent, of the 
inmates of our gaols have been imprisoned before — 
many of them several times. Consider the effects 
of this. A French writer, M. Lacassagne, has said 
that ' when a man has been two or three times in the 
prison of Paris we can have no further hope of him ; 
he is a gangrenous member of the social body.' 

Our prison system has failed because its chief aim 



12 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

has been to punish crime rather than to reform 
character. Little real attempt has been made to 
make criminals into useful citizens. We have ample 
evidence to show that too often imprisonment hardens 
the criminal, and sends him back to the world no 
better qualified and no more inclined to lead an honest 
life than before. Sir Godfrey Lushington, in giving 
evidence before a Departmental Committee presided 
over by the Home Secretary of the day, Mr. Herbert 
Gladstone, said, ' I regard as unfavourable to reforma- 
tion the status of a prisoner throughout his whole 
career ; the crushing of self-respect ; the starving 
of all moral instinct he may possess, the absence of 
all opportunity to do or, receive a kindness, the 
continual association with none but criminals, the 
forced labour, and the denial of all hberty.' Mr. 
W. F. Spaulding writing in the Forum says, ' Crime 
can no more be reduced by punishing or even reforming 
the criminal than an epidemic of smallpox can be 
stopped by curing its victims. The criminal is a 
product, and crime can be decreased only by stopping 
the production.' 

Legislation, at the best, can do comparatively 
little to remedy social evils, and in the prevention 
of crime even that little has not been done because 
for centuries our legislators have been viewing the 
matter from the wrong standpoint. They have been 
devoting their attention too exclusively to the crime, 
and in their concern to ' make the punishment fit the 
crime ' they have lost sight of the criminal. Now we 



IMPERFECT REMEDIES 13 

are concentrating our attention upon the latter, and 
we find that he is not innately and hopelessly vicious, 
that his criminality is the resultant largely of defective 
physical and mental training, and bad physical and 
social environment. If this be so, the remedy for 
crime is not punishment but removal of the conditions 
that cause it, and a thorough process of training and 
education for some useful calling. Reformatories con- 
ducted on educational lines are slowly replacing the 
old prison regime. We have begun the new process 
by the Borstal System of training youths who, 
between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, have 
been sentenced to imprisonment for at least twelve 
months. During their period of confinement they 
undergo educative and reformative treatment preparing 
them for useful callings. The system has been success- 
ful in the great majority of cases, and it is probable 
that similar methods will be extended yet to a con- 
siderable proportion of adult criminals. 

Our Poor Law system has proved equally inade- 
quate as a remedy for poverty, and it has done so 
because its root principles are deterrence and relief, 
not prevention. It has not reached the sources of 
poverty ; and whether the poverty has been brought 
about by the fault of the person himseK or of the 
community as a whole, whether the cause be moral 
or economic, physical or mental, the Poor Law requires 
that the stage of destitution must have been reached 
before help can be given. ' Thus it ordinarily deals 
with this social malady at its crisis, not at the 



14 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

commencement. At the crisis of destitution the 
family is a battered, breaking wreck, often past hope 
of salving ; had help been forthcoming when the 
storm first broke — help that self-respecting folk could 
accept without forfeiting self-respect — final disaster 
would probably never have been reached.' ^ 

The workhouse too often promotes rather than 
cures the evil it was intended to combat. By its 
undiscriminating relief of destitution it provides in 
many cases only a subsidy to misconduct. Further, 
it does nothing to build up the character of the able- 
bodied paupers who seek its shelter, or to enable them 
to become self-dependent and self-supporting. The 
recent Report (1909) of the Royal Commission on 
Poor Laws strongly condemns the workhouse system. 
' These institutions [workhouses] have a depressing, 
degrading, and positively injurious effect on the 
character of all classes of their inmates, tending to 
unfit them for a life of respectable and independent 
citizenship. Life in the workhouse does not build 
character up, it breaks down what little independence 
and alertness of mind is left. It is too good for the 
bad, and too bad for the good.' Mrs. Bosanquet, 
one of the Commissioners, in her volume on ' The 
Poor Law Report ' says, ' The Commissioners were 
convinced, both from the evidence they received and 
from what they themselves saw, that there is a class 
of persons to whom workhouse life has ceased to be 
deterrent, and that many even of those who shrink 

1 Destitution, Can we end it ? p. 8, by Rev. Henry Carter. 



IMPERFECT REMEDIES 15 

from it at first rapidly deteriorate under its influence, 
until they prefer it to the more strenuous and 
responsible life of the outside world.' If we want 
the poor to be always with us the continuance of 
the Poor Law and Workhouse system, as at present 
planned, will do much to bring about the result. 

In addition to State Relief all nations have made, 
to some extent at least, voluntary provision for the 
care of the poor and helpless among their people. 
Charity, public and private, may have an im- 
portant influence on the spirit of those who exercise 
it, and the note of humanity in it is probably worth 
all it costs; and while no one would seek to dry up 
entirely this stream of human sympathy, its general 
influence upon the recipients is open to serious 
question. It is an imperfect remedy for poverty in 
at least four respects — it is wasteful, it is undis- 
criminating, it is spasmodic and inadequate, and it 
does not prevent or cure the disease against which it 
is directed. 

Everyone acknowledges that a large part of the 
millions of pounds disbursed every year in the United 
Kingdom in what is broadly called charity is ' poured 
into a slough of poverty which swallows it up, and 
leaves no trace of improvement.' The waste of 
money is a great evil, but the waste of character is 
a greater. Charity given to those who should not 
receive it undermines seK-respect and self-reliance, 
and encourages laziness, hypocrisy, and self-indulgence. 
In such cases charity gathers parasites round it, and 



16 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

only intensifies the need and degradation it was 
intended to relieve. There are times when giving alms 
is truly no charity.^ Churches, Charitable Associa- 
tions, and philanthropic individuals have overlapped 
in their keen desire to administer relief, and have 
not always made sure that the recipients were not 
getting similar help from other sources, nor taken 
care that the money was reaching the really deserving 
and needy. By impulsive, indiscriminate giving, the 
really necessitous have often been overlooked, the 
wants of the work-shy and the bogus poor have 
been plentifully supplied, and our towns have been 
overrun by professional beggars who have reduced 
begging to a fine art. Charity may be so harmful in 
its results and may so aggravate existing evils as 
to be positively immoral.^ We do not for a moment 
suggest that charity should never be given, but we 
assert that the wise distribution of charity is one of 
the most difficult and delicate forms of social service, 
and should be engaged in only by those who have a 
full knowledge of the causes of poverty, and of the 
lives of those whom they desire to help. Poverty, 
for instance, due to industrial causes is not a problem 
which charity organisations can successfully deal 
with ; such cases are complicated ones, and money 
help will do little for them. Can we wonder that 
there is often wrung from the sufferers the bitter 

* See Daniel De Foe's Essay on Giving Alms no Charity. 

^ See The Prevention of Destitution, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 
pp. 298 et seq. (Longmans, Green, and Co.) This is the most important 
work yet written on the remedies of destitution. 



IMPERFECT REMEDIES 17 

cry, ' Curse your charity ; we want work.' Or again, 
where poverty is due to personal fault, financial 
help will only make matters worse unless it is 
accompanied by a successful demand for effort and 
improvement on the part of the recipient. A cruel 
feature of the giving of charity is that it does not 
generally raise those who receive it above the need of 
further assistance, it does not make them able to bear 
their own burden, it does not communicate to them 
the energy and initiative to take advantage of 
opportunities to help themselves. Rather it tends 
to destroy what initiative they have, and to make 
them more dependent. 

The spirit of philanthropy and charity was never 
so widely spread as it is to-day. It is fostered by the 
pulpit, the platform, and the press. And yet there 
is growing a keen sense of the total inadequacy of 
all our charity to cope with the evils of poverty. 
While we assist one family, a hundred others are 
drifting without hope into the morass of destitution. 
Our best efforts at relief do nothing to drain the 
social quagmire. Our spasmodic and inadequate 
doles generally do harm rather than good. Mr. 
Charles Booth, in the volume we have already referred 
to, says, ' Churches, Chapels and the like intervene and 
give a little help, and the widow struggles on for a 
time receiving something one week and nothing the 
next, she and her children becoming generally weaker, 
both morally and physically, through want of proper 
and sufficient food, and ultimately broken down in 



18 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

health and destitute, she comes upon the parish. . . . 
A little thought will show that shilling coal tickets 
and soup dinners and occasional half-crowns are 
practically useless to make up the loss of the bread- 
winner's wage.' Mr. Malcolm Spencer in his suggestive 
little work on ' Social Degradation ' gives expression 
to a similar opinion. * When charity is given at all 
it should be ungrudging and it should be adequate. 
. . . The giving of small sums or grocery tickets 
makes for the eradication of an honourable dislike to 
receive such help. A small sum is not generous 
enough to challenge a grateful spirit in the 
recipient, and it leaves the need unsatisfied, thus 
inviting further requests, and inducing a wheedling 
spirit.' 

Not all the wealth of the British Isles dispensed 
as charity would cure the poverty in our midst. ^ 
The problems are too vast and too complex to be 
dealt with by charity. Our help is at best an allevi- 
ation. Our philanthropy is always a little too late, 
it is an imperfect patching of an evil that is done 
and should have been prevented. It does not lie 
in the unalterable nature of things that there should 
be destitution. On the contrary, we believe with 
Thoreau that it is ' a superfluous and evitable wretched- 
ness.' It is our duty to find out what measures will 
prevent, in the general case, the occurrence of 

1 Thackeray in The Virginians says, ' Whenever you take your walks 
abroad how many poor you meet ! If a philanthropist were for rescuing 
all of them, not all the wealth of all the provinces of America would 
suffice him.* 



IMPERFECT REMEDIES 19 

destitution, and what treatment must be adopted 
to effect not merely the rehef but the cure of every 
case not prevented.^ 

Society will not rid itself of its diseases — crime, 
poverty, and all the rest — until their production is 
prevented. We must direct our attack upon these 
diseases at their source and prevent their occurrence. 
Not to the tenderness of heart which goes no farther 
than the binding up of wounds and the raising of 
those who have fallen need we look for the regeneration 
of society. No stricter enforcement of the criminal 
code, no increased activity of almsgiving, no feeding 
of the children of the poor at public expense, can be 
regarded as other than temporary expedients till 
better measures are discovered. We must go to the 
root of the matter, and we have never done that yet. 
* There is a danger lest the patches and plasters which 
our reformers would apply with such haste should 
only intensify the evil they are intended to cure.' ^ 
We must attack each social evil in its source, find 
out the causes from which it springs and institute 
a determined crusade against them. This is much 

* The time has come when the nation will be failing in its duty if 
it bases its policy on anything less than this. See the Majority and 
the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the 
Relief of Distress ; the publications of The National Committee for the 
Prevention of Destitution (37 Norfolk Street, Strand, W.C.) ; The 
Prevention of Destitution, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb ; Destitution^ 
Can we end it ? by Rev. Henry Carter ; and Social Environment and 
Moral Progress, by Alfred Russel Wallace (Cassell & Co.). 

* Tekel, p. 4, by F. J. Adkins. (Swan, Sonncnschein Sc Co.) 

c 2 



20 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

more difficult than a policy of relief. It involves 
much mental labour, much patient investigation, and 
the formulation of suitable plans of curative and 
preventive treatment. There is no royal road to the 
solution of our social problems. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CAUSES OF SOCIAL DISEASES — HEREDITY 

The aim of the preceding chapters has been to show 
that the ills that retard the progress of society are 
measurable, preventable, and curable. Our remedies 
have not succeeded because we do not know enough 
as yet of the causes at work or of the methods to be 
applied. Superficial diagnosis will not help us to 
heal our social maladies. It is futile to denounce, 
as is sometimes done, certain classes of the community 
as responsible for them, or to attribute them to human 
fallibility or original sin. Some of the best minds are 
now seeking to discover a remedy. A new spirit 
of inquiry is abroad which ' is slowly elaborating a 
knowledge of the diseases, and with the elaboration 
and completion of this scientific diagnosis is bound 
up aU the future hope of the world.' ^ 

The diagnosis is by no means easy, for we have 
to deal, not with human nature alone, nor with physical 
nature alone, but with social life, which arises from 
the interaction of the one with the other. We have to 

ri The Church and the Poor, p. 8, by Rev. W. Muir, B.D. (Edinburgh : 
Macniven & Wallace.) 



22 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

thread our way through an intricate maze of causes 
and effects, distinguishing always between those 
which are proximate and those which are remote. 
Anything short of this will lead to mistaken diagnosis, 
and, as we saw in the last chapter, to inadequate 
or unsuitable remedies. The tendency to this is the 
greater because the maladies themselves are on the 
surface, and first-aid alleviations are at hand to tempt 
us. What is more natural than to meet the evil of 
poverty by public or private charity, and in doing 
so to avoid the trouble of finding out whether the 
poverty is only temporary and requiring financial 
help, or whether it is due to some deeper cause in our 
economic or national life ? Ready-made panaceas 
should be distrusted as a means of securing either 
social or physical health. 

It is not necessary for our general purpose to 
enter into a minute analysis of the causes of the 
typical diseases of our social order mentioned in the 
opening chapter. An almost infinite variety of causal 
conditions exist which run in and out of each other; 
but we shall confine ourselves to three which appear 
to us fundamental, and which include nearly all 
minor causes that can be mentioned — they are defec- 
tive heredity, defective environment, and defective 
education. We shall examine these in turn. 

Heredity 

It is a law of nature that descendants tend to 
resemble their ancestors. Like tends to beget 



HEREDITY 28 

like. It is a matter of common observation that 
children resemble their parents, tend to have 
dispositions similar to them, and may even exhibit 
the physical and mental traits of ancestors several 
generations removed. This transmission of ancestral 
characteristics is called heredity. It is one of the 
great active principles of nature. It seems a simple 
and elementary law so long as we confine ourselves 
to physical heredity, to the transmission from parents 
to offspring of distinguishing characteristics of 
structure, form, and constitution. It is a common 
saying that if we want to secure a healthy man we 
must go back to his grandfathers and see that they 
are fit. Life Insurance Companies know the influence 
of heredity. There is more doubt, however, in the 
minds of some when we extend the law beyond 
the physical into the region of the intellectual and 
the moral. Yet, just as surely as we have physical 
heredity, so do we have mental and moral heredity. 
The recognition of this is a thing of yesterday, and 
the mediaeval doctrine of innate ideas has given 
way only slowly before it. Mind is not an uncreated 
first cause ; in the mental as in the physical realm 
there is transmission, not creation. Sir Francis 
Galton writing in 1865 said, 'The human mind was 
popularly thought to act independently of natural 
laws, and to be capable of almost any achievement 
if compelled to exert itself by a will that had a powei 
of imitation. Even those who had more philosophical 
habits of thought were far from looking upon the 



24 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

mental faculties of each individual as being limited 
with as much strictness as those of his body, still 
less was the idea of hereditary transmission of abiUty 
clearly apprehended.' ^ Professor H. H. Home of 
New York University writes with equal definiteness : 
' The intellectual child is not a happen-so, nor the 
lazy child, nor the weakly emotional child, nor the 
industrious child, nor the honest child. These, and 
all the other mental traits which together constitute 
that psychic complex we call his soul, are really the 
equivalent on the mental side of certain definite 
elements in his nervous system inherited from his 
ancestors.' ^ Or again, as Professor Karl Pearson 
said in his ' Huxley Lecture ' in 1903 : ' We inherit 
our parents' tempers, our parents' conscientiousness, 
shyness, and ability, as we inherit their stature, 
forearm, and span.' Verily — 

There is a history in all men's minds 
Figuring the nature of the times deceased. 

Ribot in his valuable treatise on ' Heredity ' 
makes an exhaustive study of the heredity of the 
various psychological elements — instincts, imagina- 
tion, memory, will, temperament, and capacity. Our 
instincts are echoes of the past reverberating through 
our nervous system, they are inherited tendencies 
to activity in the cells of our nervous mechanism which 

1 Preface to Hereditary Genius. 

* Idealism in Education, p. 21. (Macmillan & Co.) Anyone 
interested in the bearings of heredity and environment on education 
could not do better than read chapters ii. and iii. of this suggestive 
book. 



HEREDITY 25 

enable us to act, feel, or think without having learned 
to do so. We have the instinct ^ of locomotion which 
enables the child to extend in innumerable ways 
his exploration of the world. We have the instinct 
of activity and constructiveness which, as James 
says, enables ' the child not only to train the muscles 
to co-ordinate action, but to accumulate a store of 
physical conceptions which are the basis of his know- 
ledge of the material world through life.' We have 
the instinct of curiosity which constitutes the child 
a born investigator. We have the instinct of play 
which develops the muscles, and acts as a tonic to 
the brain and the whole nervous system. We have 
the social instinct which forms the groundwork of 
the training of the child for his place in society. The 
list might be prolonged almost indefinitely ; indeed, 
as some one has said, ' man is a great complex of 
tendencies to act, feel, and think in certain ways.' 
Without these inherited instincts, education and 
development, physical or mental, would be impossible. 
We may say, then, that what we are capable of 
becoming in body, mind, or character with our utmost 
development is our inheritance. ' The older one 
grows,' says Goethe, ' the more one prizes natural 
gifts, for by no possibility can they be procured and 
stuck on.' We cannot by taking thought add a 
cubit to our physical or mental stature beyond our 



^ We are here iLsing the word ' instinct ' in the older and wider 
sense, rather than in the stricter sense in which some recent psycho- 
logists use it. 



26 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

inherited limits. In this the modern theory of heredity 
and the venerable doctrine of predestination agree. 
The influence of heredity is all-pervading. * Every 
child at birth is endowed with a heritage transmitted 
from innumerable ancestors . . . which decides the 
individual's race and strain, and potentially inclines, 
if it does not actually coerce, his tastes and ambitions, 
his fears and hopes, his failure or success.' ^ Observe, 
however, that it is capacity we inherit, not actual 
attainment, which depends upon the amount of effort 
we make, and always falls short of the potentialities 
of our nature set by heredity. 

But it is the evil influences of heredity that 
we are concerned with in our present study, for 
unfortunately they are obstinate hindrances to social 
progress. Many a luckless child is handicapped by 
hereditary influences from the hour of his birth, and 
no subsequent care can secure for him an efficient 
social life : 

My child is mine. 
Yet all his gray forefathers of the past 
Challenge the dear possession : they o'ercast 
His soul's clear purity with dregs and lees 
Of vile unknown ancestral impulses ; 
And viewless hands from shadowy regions groping 
With dim negation frustrate all my hoping.^ 

The sins of the fathers, we are told, are visited upon 
the children unto the third and fourth generations, and 
modern science tends to corroborate the statement. 

1 G. A. Dorsey in Science, xi. 119. 

* From At Bay, by May Byron, quoted by Professor Home. 



HEREDITY 27 

Heredity is responsible for the lifelong handicaps 
to which many are condemned — such as blindness, 
deaf-mutism, idiocy, insanity, constitutional disease 
tendencies, and predisposition to vice and crime. ^ 
Those thus afflicted do not get, as we say, a ' square 
deal ' at birth. This is the lot of many of the children 
in the dens of our large cities. 

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces, 

And their look is dread to see, 
For they mind you of their angels in their places 

With eyes meant for Deity.^ 

When once we grasp the full import of the doctrine 
of heredity, and the mighty influence for ill it can and 
does exert on the physical, intellectual, and moral 
nature of mankind, we must regard it as one of the 
great fundamental causes of the disease of society. 

^ One of the most frequently quoted illustrations of this is the 
case of the notorious Juke family. Their history was investigated 
by R. Dugdale, and^was published in the Annual Report of the New 
York Prison Commission in 1877. He traced the brood back to a 
worthless drunken vagabond born about 1720 who married a woman 
as worthless as himself. They reared a familj' of vagabonds who in 
course of time married others of the same class. In 1877 the descendants, 
direct and indirect, numbered 1,200, of whom 300 had died in infancy, 
400 were thieves, 130 incorrigible criminals, and 310 professional 
vagrants. They cost the State of New York in all a quarter of a million 
pounds. 

2 The. Cry of the City Children, by Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CAUSES OF SOCIAL DISEASES— ENVIRONMENT 

Heredity is the alpha but it is not the omega in the 
development of complex human nature. It is not 
the only and supreme force at work ; if it were, we 
might well be weighed doA^Ti by a sense of the burden 
handed on to us from a past entirely beyond our 
control. Heredity decides to a large extent what our 
native capacity shall be, but environment deter- 
mines in the main what use shall be made of that 
capacity, whether in the physical, intellectual, or moral 
sphere. 

By environment, in a general sense, we mean the 
physical circumstances in which an organism develops. 
Writers from Plato to Darwin have called attention 
to the influence of air, climate, fertility of the soil, 
and conditions of nutrition in fashioning mankind 
by their incessant action. In the biological world 
the growth and indeed the very existence of 
an organism are dependent upon its adaptation 
to its surroundings. If the environment does not 
afford scope for the activity of the organism its 
development is stunted. It cannot exist apart 



ENVIRONMENT 29 

from its environment. The very life-process of the 
organism consists in the interaction between it and 
its environment. 

As in the biological so in the intellectual and moral 
sphere. Mental life is a continual action and reaction 
between two elements — self and environment — and 
it is by the interaction of these that the mind 
lives and develops. Mind cannot exist or develop in 
vacuo ; it is not, in this life at any rate, a spiritual 
substance existing independently of the objective 
world. Pure mind or isolated consciousness is an 
abstraction of metaphysics; we do not meet it 
in actual experience. A man has to spend his Hfe 
in certain intellectual and moral surroundings, and 
from these surroundings he must draw to a large 
extent his mental and moral sustenance. 

Yet we must not look upon man as the victim 
of an inflexible unyielding environment to which he 
must adapt himself. In considering the develop- 
ment of human society it is possible to lay too great 
stress upon adaptation to environment. Complete 
conformity or adjustment to environment is not the 
final goal of human progress. Man in virtue of his 
intelligence and his will is able to rise superior to 
environment, to conquer all influences in it detrimental 
to his mental and moral well-being, and thus to 
utilise it as a means of self-expression, of exercise, 
and of growth. Environment, in short, provides the 
opportunities for the development of the capacities 
that heredity has bestowed. Browning expresses 



30 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

with true philosophic insight the relation between 
the world within and the world without : 

I count life just a staff 

To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 

The success or failure of individuals in Hf e is measured 
largely by their power of adjustment to environment, 
and of controlling and utilising it to draw forth their 
capabilities. If we would truly understand the mean- 
ing of life, we must regard the interaction between 
man and environment as a spiritual and not a purely 
mechanical process. A person's environment is of 
one kin with himself, and furnishes the opportunity 
and indispensable medium of his self-realisation. It 
is an important function of education, as we shall 
see, to enable him so to use it. 

But before entering further into a discussion of 
the relationship between man and environment, we 
should arrive at some preliminary understanding, 
at least, as to the exact nature and scope of environ- 
ment. We are not concerned with the differences 
of opinion among scientific men as to the precise 
meaning of ' adjustment ' and ' environment.' For 
our purpose environment includes all the influences 
and agencies whatsoever operating to mould the 
individual. It is made up of two factors — the material 
and physical environment, and the social and spiritual 
environment. 

The material and physical environment in- 
cludes such influences as air, light, heat, cHmate, 



ENVIRONMENT 81 

scenery, mineral wealth, natural harbours and 
navigable rivers, stores of natural energy such 
as coal, wood, and running water ; it consists, in 
short, of nature organic and inorganic. A recent 
writer states well the influence of physical environ- 
ment on man. ' Historians,' he says, ' have long 
since noted and emphasised the far-reaching importance 
of climate and geographic surroundings upon the 
development of peoples. The mountains and coast 
lines of Greece, the seven hills of Rome, the arctic 
winter and intolerable nights of Greenland, the torrid 
sun and sweltering heat of Africa, and the fertile 
fields of America have formed the texts for many a 
chapter designed to show the effect of environment 
in shaping destinies. Reverse the surroundings of 
the Eskimo and the New Englander, the Briton and 
the Abyssinian, and what inversions of character 
might have ensued ! Indeed, we may say that the 
chance environment surrounding one's birthplace to 
a large extent determines whether one is to be a 
dreamer or a doer, an idler or a producer, a savage 
or a progressive citizen.' ^ 

The social and spiritual environment is concerned 
with man as a doer, thinker, and worshipper. It 
includes the great human institutions — the Home, 
the School, the Vocation, the State, and the Church, 
all forms of societies and organisations, spiritual 
beliefs and moral standards, our ideals, customs, 
pubHc opinions, fads and fashions, all the intellectual, 

1 Principles of Education, by F. E. Bolton, p. 24. (T. Fisher Unwin.) 



32 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

material, and moral achievements of the race, our 
language and literature, arts and science — in short, all 
the fruits of civilisation. Nearly all the influences 
and problems of life meet in the social and spiritual 
environment. 

It is not necessary to discuss at length the relative 
importance and specific effects of these two groups 
of environing influences in the development of the 
race. In the earlier stages of civilisation the influence 
of physical environment predominates. Depending 
as he does on what nature spontaneously supplies, 
primitive man flourishes best under kindly skies and 
on fertile soil where vegetable and animal food supplies 
are abundant. But as mankind rises in the scale 
of civilisation, the social and spiritual environment 
becomes more potent, and man is able at the same 
time, to an increasing extent, to master and change 
his environment as well as to adjust himself to it. 
' He modifies climate by clothing and housing, he 
adds to the productivity of the soil by right cultivation 
and by fertilisers ; if good ports or rivers are lacking, 
he digs harbours and transports his goods on canals 
or railways ; if natural power in its older forms is 
insufficient, he utilises other forces of nature by the 
scientific developments of steam and electricity ; 
and if his own region fails to supply him with ores, 
he imports them from his neighbours. In other 
words, while man is largely determined by his environ- 
ment, social as well as physical, he himself decides 
by intellectual processes what environment he desires 



ENVIRONMENT 33 

to be subjected to, and then deliberately seeks to 
create about him such an environment.' ^ The whole 
progress of civilisation has been accompanied in this 
manner by a gradual freeing of mankind from sub- 
serviency to his environment. 

The forces of environment may act in two opposite 
ways : they may feed, stimulate, and energise, or they 
may starve, repress, and kill ; and the resultant develop- 
ment depends upon the ratio of the one action to the 
other. The influence of environment for good or ill 
is depicted by Plato in his ' Republic ' in a passage of 
great beauty ^ : that young citizens ' must not be allowed 
to grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in 
some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed 
upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, 
little by little, until they silently gather a festering 
mass of corruption in their own soul.' Rather should 
they be like men living in a beautiful and healthy 
place ; ' from everything that they see and hear, love- 
liness like a breeze should pass into their souls,' and 
teach them, without their knowing it, the truth of 
which beauty is a manifestation. 

It is the pressure of environment that causes 
many, perhaps most, of the diseases of society. 
Destitution, for example, is largely due to environ- 
mental influences. The pressure of economic conditions 
makes and keeps men poor. Differences of moral and 
industrial efficiency doubtless do determine in the 
majority of cases who shall succeed or fail in the 

1 Sociology, by J. Q. Dealey, p. 97. (Silver, Burdett & Co.) 
' Republic, bk. iii. 401. 

D 



34 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

struggle for employment, but in very many instances 
the number of those who fail is determined by economic 
factors beyond their control. As the Minority Report 
for Scotland of the recent Royal Commission on 
the Poor Laws says : ' Experience has demonstrated 
that, although individuals in all sections of the 
destitute may be morally defective, and this in all 
sorts of different ways, the great mass of destitution 
is the direct and almost inevitable result of the social 
environment in which the several sections have 
found themselves, and that it can be obviated if 
the cases are taken in time and the environment 
appropriately changed.' The destitution of so con- 
siderable a proportion of our population as at present 
is not a part of the inevitable and necessary nature 
of things. It is due to defects in our human insti- 
tutions, our social arrangements, our education, our 
business, our industry — in short, to the pressure of 
social environment in some form or other. 

The harmful pressure of environment has become 
greatly accentuated in our day by the tendency of the 
population more and more to collect in crowded cities. 
A century ago something like seventeen per cent, of 
our population lived in large towns, half a century 
ago fifty per cent, was urban, now the percentage has 
risen to nearly seventy-five, and the census of 1912 
shows that the transference from country to town is 
still going on. The home by the growth of large 
cities has lost its industries and its surrounding play- 
ground, and as a result much of its educational 



ENVIRONMENT 85 

possibilities. Moreover, the wear and tear of life in 
great towns induces mental diseases, or diseases of 
the nervous system. As Professor M. V. O'Shea 
says : ' As one studies Old-World civilisation in general, 
he reaches the conclusion that no nation has yet 
discovered how to preserve continuously the physical 
and moral vigour of the people under conditions of urban 
hfe. The human body and mind were evolved in close 
contact with nature, and the evidence seems conclusive 
that they will not develop completely in the individual 
under the restraint and irritations of the city.' ^ 

The congestion of our modern cities is leading to 
serious overcrowding. In London there are 150,000 
one-room houses in which are living 313,300 persons, 
that is an average of over two persons in each room. 
There are about 20,000 persons living five in 
a room, and a like number living six, seven, or eight 
in a room. Think of the physical, social, and moral 
environment engendered by such conditions ! Little 
wonder that the crowded slums of our towns are the 
great recruiting ground of the disease, destitution, 
intemperance, vice, and crime which constitute the 
main factors in the social problem. 

And what of the children reared amid such 
surroundings ? From the hour of their birth they are 
doomed, almost inevitably, to hardship and suffering. 
George Macdonald's Unes describe their case : 

Where did you find that Httle tear ? 
I found it waiting when I got here. 

^ Social Development and Education, p. 307. (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 

D 2 



86 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Remember, too, that the influence of environment for 
good or ill is most powerful over childhood with its 
highly impressionable nature, great plasticity, extreme 
suggestibility, and infinite capacity for imitation. 

A small part of a child's intellectual or moral nature 
is inborn and peculiar to him ; by far the greater 
part is conditioned by the interaction between his 
inherited mental and moral nature and his environ- 
ment, particularly the minds and characters of 
those around him. What then of those who are 
allowed to grow up amid degrading scenes of vice 
and crime ? Too often, in the terrible words of 
Blake- 
Stricken with Albion's curse, 
They become what they behold. 

As Tennyson exclaimed, they ' soak and blacken 
soul and sense in city slime.' The description of 
child-life in the slums by Dickens in ' The Uncom- 
mercial Traveller ' is not untrue yet. ' I can find — 
must find, whether I will or not — in the open streets 
shameful instances of neglect of children, intolerable 
toleration of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, 
thieves, races of wretched and destructive cripples 
both in body and mind ; a misery to themselves, a 
misery to the community, a disgrace to civilisation, 
and an outrage on Christianity. I know it to be a 
fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of 
the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the State 
would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and 



ENVIRONMENT 37 

would with the strong hand take those children out 
of the streets while they are yet children, and wisely 
train them, it would make them a part of England's 
glory, not its shame — of England's strength, not 
its weakness — would raise good soldiers and sailors 
and good citizens and many great men out of the 
seeds of its criminal population ; it would clear London 
streets of the most terrible objects they smite the 
sight with — myriads of little children who awfully 
reverse our Saviour's words, and are not of the 
Kingdom of Heaven but of the Kingdom of 
HeU.' 1 

Improvement in the environment of the slum child 
within and without the home will play a large part 
in the solution of our social problems. 

It is hardly necessary for the purpose of the study 
we are conducting that we should attempt a precise 
estimate of the relative importance of heredity and 
environment in shaping the course of human develop- 
ment. The present-day controversy regarding this 
is merely the modern form of the time-honoured 
discussion of Nature versus Nurture. The controversy 
is, however, assuming a new importance because of 
its bearing on social reform. Social and educational 
workers must know something of the relative strength 

^ Henry George in a striking passage in Progress and Poverty 
says : ' It is my deliberate opinion that if, standing on the threshold 
of being, one were given the choice of entering life as a Tierra del Fuegan, 
a black-fellow of Australia, an Esquimau in the Arctic Circle, or among 
the lowest classes in such a highly civilised country as Great Britain, 
he would make infinitely the better choice in selecting the lot of the 
savages.' 



38 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

of the forces arrayed against them. The eugenists 
and certain scientists, led by Sir Francis Galton and 
Professor Karl Pearson, have examined the matter 
by exact methods, and have reached the conclusion 
that inheritance is the more important influence, 
and that environment counts for comparatively little. 
It is by heredity, they say, that the soul from birth 
has its predestined form, that our characters are 
moulded, our physique determined, and our inteUi- 
gence meted out. Humanity, they affirm, can be 
raised chiefly by improving the hereditary strain of 
the race through a process of selective mating, and 
through the prevention of the propagation of children 
by the physically and morally unfit. 

But the evidence produced by the investigations of 
modern biological and sociological science tends, in 
the main, to show that the admittedly powerful in- 
fluence of heredity in causing even physical degeneracy 
has been greatly over-estimated. Dr. Alfred Eichholz, 
one of the Medical Officers of the Board of Education, 
and a former Fellow and Lecturer of Emmanuel 
College, Cambridge, strongly expressed this view in 
his evidence before the Inter-Departmental Committee 
on Physical Deterioration. 

Whatever may be the case of the congenitally 
feeble-minded, the epileptics, and the deaf-mutes, 
most of our physical deficiencies are not inheritable. 
Nature tends to give every generation a fresh start. 
About 80 per cent, of children are born healthy, and 
the vast majority of the failures in life have been 



ENVIRONMENT 89 

produced by the physical and social environment to 
which they have been exposed. The expression 
of hereditary nature depends largely on environ- 
ment. At birth, the individual is equipped with the 
plasticity of mind and the capacity of development 
which are his inheritance ; but the direction and 
extent of the development depend mainly upon 
influences and stimuli from the external world. ' I 
am a part of all that I have met,' says Tennyson in 
' Ulysses,' and this is the tendency of the teaching 
of present-day science. 

If we could remove the influence of evil en- 
vironment hardly ten per cent, of the population, 
if so many, would prove unfit from other causes. 
Criminality, for instance, is not specifically a matter 
of heredity any more than phthisis is. Those who 
fill our prisons have inherited not criminality, but 
lack of control of the nervous system and certain 
weaknesses of mind and character, all of which serve 
as a good soil in which the seeds of crime may grow 
rankly if sown by an evil environment. 

In proof of the dominating influence of environment, 
we have only to recall the fact that change of environ- 
ment at an early age nearly always produces a change 
of character. Hence the marvellous success that 
has attended the taking of children from the slums 
and the worst of parents and placing them in good 
homes. In this environment the vast majority grow 
up good citizens, whereas we know that if they had 
remained in their original surroundings they would 



40 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

almost inevitably have become paupers, evil-doers, 
or criminals. The rescue work among young children 
by the late Dr. Barnardo, Mr. Quarrier, and others 
shows that, no matter what the parents may be, if 
the children are taken away and placed in good homes 
before they have been contaminated by the wicked- 
ness around them, they in almost every case do well.^ 
In attempting to estimate the relative influence 
of heredity and environment we must bear in mind 
that it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the 
effects of the two, for in very many cases inheritance 
is but the stored up effects of past environment. 
This is true of our physical and mental heredity which 
has been influenced by the environment of our 
ancestors back to the dawn of human life. It is even 
more true of what has been called social heredity, 
which is really a form of environment. Social heredity 
includes the political and social system of the nation, 
the social influences, ' the circle of thought, the 
atmosphere of ideas, the culture inheritance into 
which the individuals of the nation are born.' ^ These 

^ Statistics show that over 97 per cent, of these children rescued 
from the slums become respectable, self-supporting citizens. 

^ Dr. F. H. Hayward's Education and the Heredity Spectre, p. 18. 
(London : Watts & Co.) This work discusses in a masterly way the 
relative influence and educational significance of heredity and environ- 
ment. The author brings forward strong reasons for believing the 
influence of environment paramount. ' Heredity,' he says, ' seems at 
present mainly a theme for novelists and playwrights, a deus (or 
diabolus) ex machind of sociological and pedagogical thinking, called 
in whenever men are too ignorant or too indifferent to push their inquiries 
far. The notion of heredity tickles the modern imagination in much 
the same way as the notion of the devil tickled the imaginations of 
mediaeval men. There is something fearsome and fascinating about 



ENVIRONMENT 41 

are far more potent than physical heredity in shaping 
the mind and character of the nation. As Sir Ray 
Lankester said in his Presidential Address to the 
British Association : ' The mind of the human adult 
is mainly a social product, and can be understood 
only in relation to the special environment in which 
it develops, and with which it is in perpetual inter- 
action. . . . The recognition of this truth seems to 
be the most important advance in psychology in recent 
years.' 

Whatever be the truth regarding the relative 
influence of heredity and environment, our imme- 
diate duty is obvious — namely, to see that by wise 
restrictions every child gets a ' square deal ' at birth, 
and is given thereafter a fair chance of full physical, 
intellectual, and moral development by surrounding 
him with favourable environment, using that word 
in the comprehensive sense in which it has been used 
in this chapter. 

it. Exactly what amount of potency it possesses can at the present 
moment hardly be stated with confidence ; but inasmuch as influences 
have, in scores of cases, been credited to it that are demonstrably the 
results of environment, it behoves us to look with suspicion upon 
explanations that are very likely to be false. Entia non sunt multipli- 
canda praeter necessitatem. Until we are certain that environment, 
an intelligible and undoubted force, is not responsible in any particular 
case, we should avoid appealing to an agency whose potency is neither 
intelligible nor undoubted.' 



CHAPTER V 

THE CAUSES OF SOCIAL DISEASES (CONTINUED) — 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 

Education is a part of our environment, and the 
consideration of the extent to which defects in it may 
act as a barrier to social progress belongs strictly to 
the chapter we have just finished ; but the subject 
is so important as to deserve separate consideration. 
There has been a great deal of destructive and ill- 
informed criticism of the school and all its work. 
What we need is more of earnest constructive criticism, 
for all such criticism is in reahty co-operation. 

In the opinion of many well able to judge, educa- 
tion has not kept pacfe with the progress of society in 
other respects. Its absolute motion has been onward, 
but its relative motion, our critics tell us, has been 
retrograde. The commonest defects alleged against 
present-day school education are that it is too formal, 
too much confined to book instruction, too unpractical, 
too remote from the necessities of Hfe, and too much 
regarded as an end in itself instead of a preparation 
for economic and social life. Non vitae sed scholae 
discunt. 



DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 48 

The largest factor in the production of the in- 
competent and the failures in life is the incapacity 
for doing useful and efficient work. According to the 
investigations of Charles Booth, B. S. Rowntree, and 
others, over fifty per cent, of the cases of extreme 
poverty in our large industrial centres are due to 
inability to get and keep employment, rather than 
to sickness or faults of character. Ever3rwhere there 
are boys and girls growing up with no opportunity 
in the school or elsewhere for effective training for 
a vocation, and unenviable indeed is the fate of any- 
one who falls without practical skill or trade into 
the pitiless competition of the modern labour market. 
They swell the ranks of the casual workers living on 
the verge of poverty. Too often their industrial 
helplessness saps in course of time their moral fibre, 
and they fall into the ranks of the unemployables. 
Such has been the experience of many a promising 
youth. 

We have not yet fully recognised that the 
educational situation has been fundamentally altered 
by the industrial revolution consequent upon the 
discovery of steam power and the application of 
science to industry. By the change from hand-tools 
to machines, from manual labour to manufactured 
power, the home has been shorn of its industries, the 
small workshops have given place to the factory, 
with its intricate processes, speeded-up methods, 
and division and sub-division of labour. The changes 
have given rise to a great expansion of industry, and 



44 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

have heralded the period of world intercourse, world 
markets, and large-scale methods of production and 
distribution. 

Now the effects of the industrial revolution have 
not been entirely beneficial to the children. The 
change from rural and semi-rural to urban life has 
deprived them of the opportunities for work and 
play which are essential to their physical and mental 
development. Home industries no longer give them 
their manual training and useful occupations for their 
leisure hours. The change from complete to sub- 
divided labour has deprived apprenticeship of its 
educational value. Our predecessors were probably 
not wrong in proceeding upon the theory that the 
school should provide a general education as a supple- 
ment to the training for practical work obtained 
elsewhere, but we shall be to blame if we continue 
to follow their example. 

In the process of social evolution the time has 
arrived when the school must undertake the whole 
educational process, and not one phase of it only 
as before. It must now both train and teach, 
both provide the foundation of personal develop- 
ment and rear upon it the superstructure of in- 
tellectual attainment. The adjustment of our national 
system of education to the changed and changing 
conditions created by the industrial revolution is 
one of the most difficult and pressing problems 
before educators at the present time. Much of the 
present unrest in education is due to the continual 



DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 45 

effort of the school so to adjust its methods and 
curriculum as to enable it to provide a substitute 
for the educational influences which have ceased to 
operate, and to supply those forms of practical training 
which recent changes have caused to be dropped 
from the life of the young. 

That something is wrong at present is indicated 
by the too large percentage of children who leave 
school without the ability to pass the tests applied by 
the Government Department of Education at the 
end of the compulsory school age. The educational 
process has broken down in their case, not necessarily 
because they are dull or careless, but often because the 
course of instruction has only appealed to a relatively 
small part of their nature, and has, in consequence, 
failed to secure their attention and interest. Until 
recent times the whole of the energy of the school has 
been devoted to the three R's, and English, Geography, 
and History, and the consequence has been that even 
these have not been taught satisfactorily. They 
must always be the most important subjects in the 
primary school, but alone they do not satisfy the 
deepest instincts and interests of childhood — namely, 
the instinct for doing, the instinct for play, and the 
instinct for social life. 

While the child is yet in the most receptive and 
plastic period of his life, we must follow more 
closely the lead of nature, and educate and develop 
all the powers of the child, especially the active 
powers. Fifty years ago Carlyle pointed out the 



46 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

need of this. ' Our schools,' he said, ' go all upon 
the vocal hitherto ; no clear aim in them but 
to teach the young creature how he is to speak, to 
utter himself by tongue and pen ; which, supposing 
him even to have something to utter, as he so very 
rarely has, is by no means the thing he specially wants 
in our times. How he is to work, to behave and do, 
that is the question for him which he seeks the answer 
of in schools.' Bergson in recent times has expressed 
the same view. In his work on ' Creative Evolution ' 
he says : ' We think only in order to act. Our intellect 
has been cast in the mould of action. Speculation 
is a luxury, while action is a necessity.' ^ 

Neglect to train the active powers of childhood 
has caused in the past many of the failures, misfits, 
and non-valeurs of life. Dr. Snedden, the Com- 
missioner of Education in the State of Massachusetts, 
has given strong expression to this opinion in these 
words : ' To the student of social life — the social 
economist — it is becoming apparent that a large, if 
not the largest, factor in the production of the vicious 
and incompetent, the criminal and the pauper, is 
incapacity to produce effectively, to work productively. 
The idle boy, the loafer, the untaught youth, the 
untrained girl — they are destined usually to be a 
heavy burden to society instead of being bearers 

^ Professor Darroch states with philosophic power the pragmatic 
position in education in the first two chapters of his work on Education 
and the New Utilitarianism. (Longmans, Green, and Co.) He points 
out the need of laying greater stress on the practical and constructive 
arts, and upon co-operative methods in the work of the school. 



DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 47 

of burdens.' ^ In the education of delinquents and 
those who have inherited criminal tendencies we now 
recognise the necessity of training the physical and 
industrial capacities as well as the intellectual. Those 
whom nature leads to destroy are taught to produce. 
When will the advantage of such training be extended 
more fully to ordinary school children ? It would 
involve, no doubt, a good deal of re-surveying and re- 
valuing of the subjects and methods of instruction ; 
but it is worth our while to undertake the task, for 
it would add vitality to our primary education. 

The child should be led to see more clearly than 
is the case at present the usefulness of the training he 
is receiving in school. We might supply to him to a 
greater extent a motive or end for what he is required 
to do by revealing, say, its place in achievement. It 
will not do to be always telling the child that he will 
see the use some day of what he is learning now. 
The motive is too remote to stimulate his interest 
or fix his attention. In primary school practice there 
is too much application of the doubtful doctrine of 
formal training of the faculties, and there is too much 
of what Tolstoi called ' the snare of preparation ' — 
always doing something for the sake of something 
which the pupil does not yet see. With care and 
forethought it is possible to make the pupil feel even 
now the practical utility of the training he is receiving. 
We need all through the primary school curriculum 
more education ad hoc — that is, education having 

* Educational Review, January 1910, p. 17. 



48 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

a direct bearing upon the activities and purposes of 
life. 

That the school may be an effective means of 
social progress it must make more of the invaluable 
human material entrusted to its care. It must regard 
the pupil less as a product to be turned out according 
to a stereotyped pattern, and more as a living 
personality, carrying within him the secret of his 
own mental and moral growth. The essence of 
personality is purpose and free activity, and the 
cultivation of these must be made the starting-point 
of effective teaching. Guidance, not repression, is 
the function of education.^ The latter, we know, 
may produce a conventional and non-imaginative 
type of child, but only the former can produce the 
capable, adaptable, and self-reliant citizen required 
to meet existing social conditions. We need to 
cultivate more efficiently the feelings and the will, 
and the whole moral nature of the child, and we can 
do this more successfully by guidance and training 
in the use of active freedom than by any system of 
external prohibitions. 

^ Mr. Cloudesley Brereton says in the Fortnightly Review, June 1913 : 
' We have got in many ways radically to change our ideas. Instead 
of having a sort of regulation education which we fit like a cast-iron 
boot on to every child ol a certain age, we have got first to measure, 
so to say, the child's foot and then make the boot that it requires. 
In a word, we have got, first and foremost, to diagnose the child's main 
aptitude, and then only can we decide what is best for the child ; we 
must, in fact, first attempt to discover what is his predominant ability 
and bias, and then, taking carefully into account the time he is likely 
to remain at school, draw up for him a course of study or direct him 
towards a course of study that seems tp meet the oeeds of his case.' 



DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 49 

Another respect in which our system of public 
education has certainly retarded social progress has 
been its almost total neglect, until quite recent times, 
of the physical well-being of the child. Body and 
mind are but two aspects of our being. If the mind is 
worked at the expense of the body, the physical power 
is lowered, and thereby the intellectual power, for 
the one reacts upon the other. Similarly, if the 
physical side of our being is neglected, our mental 
power is thereby impaired. In order that the race 
may prosper, the educational system of the country 
must aim at developing the bodies and minds of the 
children at the same time and in due proportion. 

We recognise now, as we never did before, that 
the most important resource of the nation is the 
health of the people, and that consequently the most 
valuable item in the nation's capital of vitality is the 
health of the young. The health of the adult com- 
munity is built upon the physical welfare of th3 
children ; therefore the school is our most influential 
agency for the conservation of national health and 
working power. Children should through education 
leave school with fewer physical defects, sounder 
bodies, keener eyesight, and better hearing than when 
they entered it. On the contrary, we have abundant 
evidence that the unavoidable strain of school work 
is accentuated by the harmful length or sequence of 
lessons, or by defects in heating, lighting, ventilating, 
and seating arrangements. 

Investigations by the Physical Deterioration 



50 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Committee revealed that 70 per cent, of the children 
about to leave the Primary Schools in West Ham, 
and 66 per cent, in Manchester, were below the 
normal standard of physical development. Sir 
George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the Board 
of Education, states that of the six million pupils 
in the elementary schools of England and Wales, 
it is found on investigation that about 10 per cent, 
suffer from serious defects of vision, 3 to 5 per 
cent, from defective hearing, 1 to 3 per cent, from 
suppurating ears, 10 per cent, from adenoids or 
enlarged tonsils requiring surgical treatment, 20 to 
40 per cent, from harmful decay of the teeth, 1 per 
cent, from tuberculosis, and 1 to 2 per cent, from heart 
disease. Investigations by Dr. W. Leslie Mackenzie, 
Medical Member of the Scottish Local Government 
Board, have revealed a similar state of affairs in 
Scotland ; so that we may take it as proved that all 
over the country from 50 to 70 per cent, of our school 
children are suffering from physical degeneration or 
disease in some form or other. Modern research 
confirms the truth on every hand that 

This mad unthrift world 

Every hour throws life enough away 

To make the deserts kind and hospitable. 

When we consider the amount of preventable 
disease among school children, the effects that 
inevitably follow in the health of the community in 
the next generation, and the national burden of sick- 
ness and disablement caused by it, we see that we 



DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 51 

have here one of the main hindrances to social progress. 
Doubtless the recently instituted periodical medical 
inspection of school children, and the provision in 
necessitous cases of remedial treatment, will have a 
great effect in conserving the national health and 
working power, and so will the increased attention 
now given in the curriculum to physical training. 
But in addition to these, children must get definite 
instruction in the laws of health, and, in particular, 
girls must get better instruction in all household arts. 
Anyone who knows the conditions in the poorer 
districts of our cities is appalled at the gross ignorance 
of mothers there regarding the cooking of the com- 
monest articles of food, and regarding the care of 
children, and the hygiene of the home. The primary 
school must certainly pay yet closer attention to this 
part of its curriculum. 

Education will never have the efficiency it should 
in combating the ills of society so long as children of 
school age are allowed to engage in exhausting and 
often demoralising forms of employment out of school 
hours. The attention of the country was called to 
this point by a Parliamentary Return in 1899 which 
showed ' that at least 144,000 or 10 per cent, of the 
children in full time attendance at school were 
employed out of school hours for wages,' the majority 
being engaged in going errands, some in street- trading, 
others in sweated industries at home, such as 
flower-making, box-making, and the like. If half- 
timers had been included in the above Return the 

X 2 



52 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

number of child-workers would have been almost 
doubled. 

Following on the exposures made by this Return, 
an Inter-Departmental Committee was appointed 
to investigate the whole matter. The Committee 
reported that they found themselves ' compelled to 
offer an unqualified condemnation of the educational 
effect of the system of partial exemption in both town 
and country. . . . The bright child becomes mediocre, 
the average child dull, and the dull child hopeless.' 
The reasons are not far to seek. HaK-time work 
interferes with the education of the child just at 
the time when it is most important. Moreover, the 
double work, in very many cases, imposes a strain 
greater than his body can bear. The price is paid 
in lowered bodily and mental vitality, inability to 
profit to the full extent by schooling, stunted physical 
development, and impaired health. 

As a result of the recommendations of the Inter- 
Departmental Committee the Employment of Children 
Act w^as passed in 1904. The Act forbids the employ- 
ment between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. of any child of school 
age, the emplo5rment of any child in work likely to 
be injurious to his health or education, and of children 
under eleven in street trading. The Act also gives 
local authorities powers to make by-laws further 
restricting the employment of children in their 
districts, especially in certain occupations common 
in the districts. Only a small number, however, of the 
local authorities have as yet made by-laws under the 



DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 58 

Act, and there is no doubt that the large number of 
children still seriously overworked out of school hours, 
often in unsuitable occupations, is a barrier to social 
progress. There is a proposal being made in Parlia- 
ment to supplement the Employment of Children 
Act by another placing on School Boards the 
responsibility of licensing boys and girls from fourteen 
to sixteen years of age wishing to engage in street 
trading. This is part of a general movement to place 
the whole of the care of children under the educational 
rather than the police or other authorities. 

The last defect in our educational system we shall 
mention is the absence of a compulsory and com- 
pletely organised system of continuation education. 
A large fraction of our population does not attend 
a school of any kind after thirteen or fourteen years 
of age. These children have only got at best the 
rudiments of an education, and under modern con- 
ditions of industry they become derelicts in the lowest 
grades of work, doomed 

To drudge through weary life without the aid 
Of intellectual implements or tools. 

Here is no small cause of our social problems. 

One of our chief hopes of the progress of society 
in the future lies in repairing the acknowledged defects 
of our educational system, and so increasing its power 
as a lever in raising the sunken and struggling part 
of our population, who are at once a discredit and a 
source of weakness to our social order. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEOGRESS 

One principle in relation to human progress we 
hope we have established — namely, that the ills of 
society cannot be remedied by alleviating individual 
cases of distress. Moreover, mere external treatment 
of symptoms is not enough. We must discover the 
deep-seated causes of the ills, and submit them to 
suitable treatment. Only thus can we improve the 
condition of the whole body politic. 

Genetic Development 

Herbert Spencer has taught us that society is 
not a mechanism but a living growth. It is subject 
to the general laws of development of every organism, 
and its growth to a more perfect form is taking place by 
the gradual processes of evolution. In the first place, 
there is a slow and steady progress of society towards 
a higher type naturally and without deliberate plan 
or effort. We may call this genetic or racial develop- 
ment. The factors that cause it are many and often 
minute. They may be the instinctive groping of 



CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS 55 

humanity towards a goal unknown, or the desire to 
excel which is innate in human nature, or the rivalry 
of competition, the struggle of class with class or 
nation with nation, or the stress of material necessity, 
or the struggle against a poor chmate, an infertile 
soil, or an unfavourable location. The influences, 
indeed, are innumerable, and they call forth a certain 
amount of thought and effort directed towards an 
immediate purpose. There is no far-sighted end in 
view, but nevertheless progress of the race towards 
higher conceptions of life and thought is made — so 
slowly, it may be, as to be only perceptible through 
long stretches of time. 

Not only is genetic development slow, it is also 
highly expensive in proportion to the benefits derived. 
In the struggle and rivalry by which the progress 
is achieved much suffering and waste are inevitable. 
Many become physically and mentally stunted by 
the hardness of the struggle, and never attain to their 
real possibilities. Mental energy that was capable 
of high achievement is expended on a lower level in 
overcoming material difficulties. There are : — 

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, 
Or waked to ecstasy the Uving lyre. 

But 

Chill penury repressed their noble rage 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 

* There are some natures so sensitive and refined that 
their best products become bhghted in a keenly 



56 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

competitive system, so that the aggressive only 
survives but not the ethereal and the spiritual. In 
quietness the divine is born.' ^ 

Telic Development 

Genetic development is the method of the world 
of nature, but in human affairs it is to a large extent 
supplanted by development on a higher plane. Here 
the blind relentless struggle for existence is replaced 
by purposive or teleological or, briefly, telic develop- 
ment. As compared with genetic development, it 
emphasises the moral and spiritual more than the 
physical side of the world-process ; it is a conscious 
adaptation of social forces for definite purposes, rather 
than an unconscious drifting towards an unknown 
goal ; it is constructive rather than destructive ; 
it inspires rather than depresses ; it substitutes 
mental co-operation and interdependence on a higher 
plane for the struggle for existence on a lower plane ; 
it is socialistic rather than individualistic ; it is directed 
towards the general elevation of the standard of life 
of the whole human family rather than of the stronger 
and more aggressive members of it. 

There are still those who attach less importance 
to telic development in human progress than to the 
blind drift of genetic development. They believe 
that progress has been due mainly to unconscious 
natural forces, such as the pressure of material needs ; 
and that where conscious psychical forces appear to 

1 Dealey's Sociology, p. 178. 



CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS 57 

have exerted initiative, they have generally been 
occasioned by physical impulses. But everyone will 
be ready to admit that conscious effort at least greatly 
economises the power of unconscious forces, and 
abbreviates the slow processes of nature. We cannot 
leave everything to vis medicatrix naturae. The fuller 
study of the modes of social evolution now taking place 
is causing us to assign greater importance to the power 
of consciously ordered effort in the progress both of 
individuals and of peoples. There is every reason 
to believe, too, that, with the growing self-conscious- 
ness of nations, moral and spiritual considerations 
will more and more outweigh material forces, and that 
in future the progress of nations will be more and 
more determined by the capacity they display for 
the purposive utilisation of their resources. 

The chief factors in telic development are social 
reform, economic reform, and educational reform. 
The importance of these has been recognised by all 
the famous Utopians from Plato to the present time. 
The panaceas for social reform put forward by modern 
humanitarians are bewildering in their number and 
variety, but they at any rate justify the hope that all 
this anxiety to lighten the burden of the depressed 
classes will some day lead to a deeper knowledge of 
the determining factors in social progress, and will 
enable us to lay more securely the foundations of a 
higher civilisation. 

The socialistic theories so prevalent at the present 
time are attempts at a solution of the social problems 



58 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

by economics. In their extreme forms they are 
undoubtedly erroneous and inexpedient, but they 
are indications among others that the rising tide of 
telic development will lead, probably at no distant 
date, to a drastic revision of our economic theories, 
and a rejection of many of the outworn methods and 
obsolete data of our political economy. In the 
economic sphere new achievements in science and 
invention will cheapen food supplies, and set free a 
vast amount of energy and capital now wasted. 
Machinery and labour-saving devices will be multiplied 
to perform the work now done by unskilled and badly 
paid labour, and to increase vastly the effectiveness 
and productive power of the nation. One man with 
the arts and tools and machinery of to-day can do 
the work formerly done by fifty or a hundred men; 
and the people of one of our manufacturing towns 
have a greater productive power than had the whole 
of Britain a century ago. The necessaries of life have 
been cheapened by these means, and the whole nation, 
except the totally submerged class, has been lifted 
to a higher plane of material comfort and industrial 
welfare. Wages have been increased, and the length 
of the working day has been diminished from 15 hours 
to 12, from 12 to 10, from 10 to 9, and it is probable 
that the end has not yet been reached. 

But the advent of machinery has brought its 
special dangers. The machine, as some one has said, 
is apt to make a class of machine citizens, lacking in 
individuality, narrow in interests, and unable to use 



CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS 59 

to the best advantage the wider margin of leisure and 
money which modern conditions allow. Machines 
have practically abolished the education of apprentice- 
ship. Yet we must have machines, even although 
we know they will continue to narrow the workman, 
to diminish his pride of craftsmanship, and in many 
cases to displace him altogether. But it is not 
inevitable that an age of machinery should destroy 
the power of personality, provided the workman has 
a broad education and intellectual interests beyond 
his work. Machinery will increase his intervals of 
leisure in which to widen his mental horizon and 
develop his higher life. 

If we regard the advent of machinery aright 
we see that it is but an expression of the will of 
man, enabling him to fulfil his larger destiny and 
higher purposes. This idea is well expressed by 
Professor Dealey, a well-known writer on social and 
political science. ' As man advances in knowledge 
he learns how more effectively to master nature, to 
manipulate its resources at will, and to harness for 
his purposes its energy and productivity. Each 
forward step implies that men shall henceforth rely 
less on their own muscular exertions and more on 
mental capacity. The mechanical, routine drudgery 
of life is slowly passing away, and in its place is coming 
a demand for trained intellect utilising machinery. 
But this implies far greater productivity for the same 
amount of human energy. ... As the working day 
decreases in length, the worker will find himself with 



60 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

abundant leisure on his hands, and he also will find 
pleasure in the arts, in science, and in philosophic 
meditation. In short, all will become members of 
the leisured class, for all will have energy and 
opportunity for the cultivation of the higher life. . . . 
When unskilled labour and ignorance disappear from 
civilisation, the social reformer will at last come into 
his own, and Utopians may rest in peace.' ^ 

The industrial revolution and the introduction of 
machinery have placed us at the beginning of a new 
era. Yesterday was the day of the few ; the day 
of the many is dawning when every man shall have 
the opportunity of self-realisation which is his by 
right. Social and economic re-organisation scientifi- 
cally applied will continue to engage the thought 
and enlarge the power of the statesman, but the 
emphasis will be placed more and more on the 
chief factor in social progress — Education. 

^ Dealey's Sociology, p. 181. 



CHAPTER VII 

EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 

EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 

In previous chapters we have discussed the influence 
of heredity and environment in social pathology ; what 
we have to consider now is, given the hereditary 
merits and faults of man, what can education do to 
mould them for the good of the race ? In human 
progress the ethnical, not the individual, is the true 
point of view. The problem before education is not 
merely the instruction of individuals but the preserva- 
tion and elevation of the race. The effects of education 
do not cease with the individual ; all posterity shares 
in the social inheritance received by the individual 
and modified by him for good or ill during his lifetime. 
The task of education in this connection has been 
defined to a large extent by the work of biologists, 
whose investigations are continually throwing light 
on the subject of heredity, and on the degree of modifi- 
cation of which it is susceptible. Certain facts have 
already been definitely established by biology, and 
can be used by the educationist as he seeks to modify 
the influences of heredity. Enough is already known 



62 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

to show that heredity has freighted the soul and body 
of each child with the accumulated results of ancestral 
well- and ill-doing, that education can overcome 
many of the defects due to inheritance, and that on 
the right development by education of hereditary 
acquisitions depends in some measure the progress 
of civilisation a generation or two hence. 

Heredity marks in broad outlines the limits of the 
capacities of each individual. Some minds have ten 
talents, others five, and others one, and it is the 
function of education to enable each type of mind to 
put its inherited talents to the best use. Education 
cannot change inborn capacity, but it can discover 
and develop it. Education, Wordsworth tells us, 
can 

Nourish imagination in her growth. 
And give the mind that apprehensive power 
Whereby she is made quick to recognise 
The moral properties and scope of things. 

But it cannot create imagination, it can only stimulate 
and develop it up to the limit of hereditary endow- 
ment. It is waste of effort and resources on the part 
of education to attempt to create capacities which 
are denied at birth. It is attempting that which 
is physiologically as well as psychically impossible. 
We cannot educate what nature has not put there. 
Two mistakes education has made in the past 
in connection with heredity, and they have cost the 
nation dear. One we have just referred to — namely, 
the persistent, some would say presumptuous, attempt 



EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 63 

to create capacity. Education cannot add a single 
cell to the brain. It cannot develop one who is devoid 
of imagination and manipulative skill into an artist, 
nor one who is weak in mathematical power into a 
mathematician. As Ruskin puts it, ' apricot out of 
currant, great man out of small, did never yet art 
or effort make.' Sir Francis Gait on says : ' I have 
no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, 
and often implied, especially in tales written to teach 
children to be good, that babies are born pretty much 
alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences 
between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady 
application and moral effort. It is in the most un- 
qualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural 
equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, 
the university, and of professional careers are a chain 
of proof to the contrary. I acknowledge freely the 
great power of education and social influences in 
developing the active powers of the mind, just as I 
acknowledge the effect of use in developing the muscles 
of a blacksmith's arm, and no further. Let the 
blacksmith labour as he will, he will find that there 
are certain feats beyond his power that are well within 
the strength of a man of herculean make.' 

The other mistake of education has been the 
attempt to turn out all pupils uniformly developed 
and rounded off in accordance with some preconceived 
ideal. Nature has her own order of talent and we 
must follow that. In the attempt to perform the 
impossible and develop all alike little progress has 



64 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

been made, and in the time thus spent latent talents 
and potential capacities have been allowed to pass 
undiscovered or to atrophy by neglect. Dormant or 
undeveloped capacity is as valueless as no capacity. 
It is the duty of education to discover and develop 
native abilities, to enable each one to realise his 
capacities, to make the most of his inheritance, to 
give him the will and the power to do and to be the 
utmost that his inherited potentialities allow. It 
is thus that education can contribute most to the 
advancement of civilisation and the progress of society. 
The question is sometimes asked whether education 
should seek to develop the strongest or the weakest 
points in the hereditary equipment peculiar to each 
individual. If we were sure that characteristics 
strengthened or acquired during one's hfetime were 
transmitted to posterity, we should certainly seek 
to develop the weakest powers of each individual, 
and thus tend to produce permanent superiority 
within the race. The question of the transmission 
of acquired characteristics will be discussed more 
fully below, but in the present state of our knowledge 
we should say that while education should aim at 
cultivating a general equilibrium of the powers of 
each individual, it should lay stress on the hereditary 
capacities which are strongest in the individual, and 
will enable him to contribute most to the well-being 
of society. For everyone, even the most depraved 
and ignoble, has in him, covered over and concealed 
deep down it may be, some personal quahty valuable 



EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 65 

to the world — a quality that can only become fully 
active if developed by education. It is the task of 
education to arouse dormant heredity, and to give 
every man the particular training that wiU enable 
him to fulfil the purpose in society for Avhich he is 
endowed.^ 

Conversely, if education should by purposive 
selection cultivate the good, it should also seek to arrest 
and check the bad. Unfortunate though it seem, 
heredity preserves defects as well as excellences, and 
there is bad — both intellectual and moral — in the best 
of us as well as good in the worst. By withholding 
the opportunities that would call forth the bad we 
must let it die a natural death through lack of exercise. 

^ This subject is fully discussed by Professor H. H. Home in his 
work on Idealism in Education (Macmillan). At p. 43 of that work 
he says : ' Where heredity has left us weak we are likely to remain 
weak, as for example, in common sense, humour, or temperament, 
despite much effort. It therefore pays in the case of the individual 
to develop him most in the forte in which he is strongest ; this will be 
his contribution to society. This method is attended with the risk 
of narrowness, eccentricity, and specialisation, but it accomplishes 
highest individual achievement and greatest social progress. The 
risk is to be run, minimised indeed by some attentive effort to the weak 
points, while the strongest points, however, are receiving the greatest 
emphasis. The notion of a well-balanced, all-round, harmoniously 
developed human mind is a fictitious ideal ; we are strong in some 
points and weak in others ; our general ability is really an average of 
varying abilities in different directions. As nature endoAvs us this 
way, educational effort should be similarly proportioned, giving most 
time to the strongest points. A genius in a given line may actually 
be handicapped by being compelled to follow alien interests. Society 
has many men who can do the things we do poorly ; we are fortunate 
if society has not many men who can do the things we can do best. 
While the strong points are to be emphasised, the weak points are not 
to be neglected. And both strong and weak points may need stimuli 
to awaken them.' 



66 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Harmful tendencies and instincts can be turned by 
education into useful channels or be weakened, 
counteracted, or modified by the cultivation of 
opposing impulses and emotions. This, we take it, 
is what is meant by getting rid of original sin. The 
education which accomplishes most is that which 
works through, rather than against, our native 
impulses, and which conserves their energy while 
modifying them into more useful forms. 

What we have been suggesting presupposes an 
intimate knoAvledge of the hereditary possibihties 
and hmitations of each pupil in a class. We cannot 
otherwise make the most of the fund of original 
tendencies each one brings into the world, eradicating 
what is useless and supplying the additions that are 
desirable. The child has a claim to be studied and 
understood by his would-be educators, and the progress 
of society demands that we should ascertain and 
develop talent wherever it exists for moral or 
cultural or practical achievement. It is the power 
to do this that marks the great and inspiring teacher. 

Education can aid progress by recognising and 
training abilities valuable to social progress. We can 
only attain the highest collective life through the fullest 
development of individual hfe. The better recognition 
of varying inborn capacities and natures is thus one 
of the pressing needs of education. The absence of 
this in the past has too often led to blundering and 
retardation. Many have complained, and sometimes 
with justice, of the inappropriateness of the education 



EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 67 

they received at school. Education in the future 
must be made to fit the child and not the child the 
education. For this we must have smaller classes 
and individual education ; children have been treated 
in the mass too long.^ 

In cases in which it is possible, a knowledge of 
the parents of the child and of the hereditary ten- 
dencies of the family will help greatly in diagnosing 
his capacities and in guiding us as to the best plan 
of his education. But it would be futile to push our 
induction too far, for the child's inheritance goes 
back to the remote past, and there are qualities in 
him that we cannot trace in either parent. Any 
individual mind is the product of infinite ages of 
heredity. 

In the same way a study of racial characteristics 
would be an advantage to every teacher. If we would 
know the child aright we must study him historically. 
A knowledge of the evolutionary development of the 
race in the past is the key to the understanding of 
the child to-day. If we know the psychology of the 
race of the child, his little variations from the normal 
wiU have more meaning to us. 

A question of great interest, though a difficult one, 
is : Can the influence of education in one generation 

1 Professor Home in the work we have just mentioned says : ' A 
child's nature is a seed of life with an immanent design, perhaps a whole 
flower garden, weeds and all. To educate a child is to comprehend 
the plan of its soul and to assist this plan towards its full realisation. 
Study to know then your individual child and use your knowledge. 
No two souls are precisely alike, not even of twins. Least of all, then, 
is education the recasting of all souls in the same mould.' 

V 2 



68 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

be handed on to the next ? We do not refer to the 
material, intellectual, or moral progress of society 
which results from education. That is part of what 
we may call our social inheritance which descends 
from generation to generation as certainly as physi- 
cal inheritance. Each generation receives through 
education all the social achievements of the past, 
its literature, science, art, inventions, and industry, 
adds to them and passes them on to the next. The 
influence of social heredity on the development of 
the race can hardly be over-estimated. But it is a 
part of our environment, and we need not anticipate 
the discussion of the next chapter. The question 
before us at present is rather the very practical 
one whether the education of the present generation 
helps to make the education of the future race 
easier.^ 

The question is really a biological one, for high 
psychic attainment depends upon the possession of 
a nervous system delicately organised, and a brain 
with much grey matter and highly convoluted. One 
would naturally suppose that centuries of ancestral 
thinking would be bound to produce an influence on 
the physical structure of the brain which would be 
handed on from one generation to another. As 
Professor Donaldson puts it in his great work on 

1 Plato in his Republic refers to the question and answers it in the 
afiirniative. ' Good nurture and education,' he says, ' implant good 
constitutions, and these good constitutions, taking root in a good 
education, improve more and more, and this improvement affects the 
breed in man as in other animals.' Bk. iv. 424. 



EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 69 

' The Growth of the Brain ' : ' We feel . . . that the 
descendants of several generations of educated 
ancestors should have a nervous system favourably 
modified, more vigorous, more responsive, more 
accurate in its reactions, and growing, perhaps, for 
a longer time, thus extending the period of its 
adaptabihty. But for this evidence must still be 
sought.' And this is the view of the majority of 
biologists at the present time. The human brain 
has developed as the result of countless ages of 
evolution, but this development is not through 
inheritance of acquired characteristics, biologists say, 
but through the preservation of better variations. 
The effects of the education of each individual are so 
external to his nervous make-up as to be an acquisition 
during his lifetime rather than an inheritance, and 
therefore they have to be acquired afresh by the 
next generation. 

So the question with which we started is a part 
of the classic one : Can acquired characters be 
inherited ? Philosophers and biologists have been 
discussing this since the time of Plato, and seem as 
far from setthng it as ever. All are agreed that 
physical and mental characters which are congenital 
are transmissible to offspring, but in the make-up 
of body and mind there are in addition certain 
characteristics acquired during the lifetime of each 
individual which he did not inherit, and it is regard- 
ing the transmissibility of these acquired traits that 
there is still considerable doubt and discussion. 



70 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

The popular opinion is that they are transmissible, 
but scientific opinion is much more divided. Darwin, 
Lamarck, Herbert Spencer, Haeckel, Ribot, and many 
other prominent biologists, especially in France and 
America, believe that acquired traits may be trans- 
mitted in some measure from parent to child. Spencer 
leaves no room for doubt. ' Either,' he says, ' there 
has been inheritance of acquired characters or there 
has been no evolution.' Ribot in the Preface to his 
work on ' Psychological Heredity ' says : ' In general, 
accidental deformities and mutilations are not trans- 
mitted ; we are not surprised that the child of a man 
with one eye or one arm has two eyes or two arms. 
Even the transmission of scars is not always estab- 
lished on very sure proof. But, apart from the 
modifications due to local, partial, or brutal causes 
there are those which result from slow action, which 
intimately affect the living organism by nutrition and 
even by education. The experiences of teachers are 
not calculated to weaken the belief in a transmission 
of certain acquired characters.' On the other hand, 
Weismann, Sir Francis Galton, A. R. Wallace, Karl 
Pearson, and the majority of biologists deny the 
possibility of the transmission of modifications acquired 
during the lifetime of the individual.^ 

1 After many years of research Weismann in 1892 formed the opinion 
that the germ cells contain a substance called germ- plasm out of which 
the new individual is formed, one portion beirg used up to form the 
new body cells, the other portion remaining perfectly uncha.nged to form 
the new germ -plasm of the germ cells of the individual of the next 
generation. According to this theory the germ-plasm of the new 
individual is not derived from the body cells of the parents, nor is it 



EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 71 

The vehemence of the biological contention is now 
abating, for it is found that the facts are not all on 
one side, and that much of the division of opinion in 
the past has been due to differences in the meaning 
attached to the term ' acquired character.' This 
has been more clearly defined in recent times, and 
the general opinion among scientists now is that 
modifications acquired during the lifetime of an 
individual are not transmissible, with the very doubtful 
exception of those that influence for good or bad the 
vital powers of the individual. Hence it is the duty 
of education to secure that acquired characteristics 
are re-impressed upon each successive generation if 
they are good, or are suppressed if they are bad. 

The question of the transmissibility of acquired 
characters is of more than purely academic interest. 
' Our decision regarding it,' says Professor J. A. 
Thomson (' Heredity,' p. 165), ' affects not only our 
whole theory of organic evolution, but even our every- 
day conduct. The question should be of interest to 
the parent, the physician, the teacher, the moralist, 
and the social reformer — in short, to us all.' 

So far as education is concerned some conclusions 
of importance follow from the discussion in which 
we have been engaged. For one thing, it has taught 



subject to modifications taking place in the body ; it is transmitted 
absolutely unchanged from generation to generation. What the off- 
spring will be depends therefore upon what the germs of the parents 
are. Inheritance is from germs to germs. These lead an isolated 
and protected life, and are not affected by traits acquired by education 
or other means. 



72 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

us the need of caution in estimating the relative 
importance of these two factors in social evolution — 
heredity and education. Both have their place and 
their limitations.^ We cannot accept the view of 
some that heredity is all-powerful, that inherited 
ability, temperament, or character cannot be modified 
by education, that the mathematician, the poet, and 
the criminal are all alike born, not made, and that 
the destiny wrapped up in them at birth unfolds 
itself inevitably during their lifetime. If this were 
so, the sole business of the educator would be to 
' draw out ' the inherited ' faculties ' and predeter- 
mined characteristics of the child committed to his 
care.^ In that case there would be little hope of the 
improvement of the race. 

But one vital factor has been overlooked by the 
supporters of the supremacy of heredity — namely, that 
man, the highest product of organic evolution, has in- 
herited a plastic, not a rigid, brain endowed, as in the 
case of the lower animals, with a highly developed 

^ Donaldson, in discussing the relative importance of education and 
heredity, says : ' Education must fail to produce any fundamental 
changes in the nervous organisation, but to some extent it can strengthen 
formed structures by exercise, and in part waken into activity the 
unorganised remnant of the dormant cells. No amount of cultivation 
will give good growth where the nerve cells are few and ill-nourished, 
but careful culture can do much where there are those with strong, 
inherent impulses toward development. On neurological grounds, 
therefore, nurture is to be considered of much less importance than 
nature, and in that sense the capacities that we most admire in persons 
worthy of remark are certainly inborn rather than made.' {The Growth 
of the Brain, p. 343.) 

* Dr. F. H. Hayward gives a full and able discussion of this in his 
Education and the Heredity Spectre. (Watts & Co.) 



EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 73 

apparatus of fixed instincts. The unique inheritance 
of mankind is, as Dr. F. H. Hayward has shown, the 
plasticity, suggestibiHty, and educabihty of his brain. 
Through these quahties the educator can guide the 
development of the natural capacity of the child, and 
impart ideas and ideals to him. The plasticity of the 
human brain makes the influence of education well- 
nigh omnipotent in moulding-power when compared 
with heredity. As Hamlet says, ' Use can almost 
change the stamp of nature.' 

Man is partly born and partly made, and his 
ultimate development depends partly on heredity, 
but largely on education and training. He inherits 
his capacity, but his actual attainment, intellectual 
or moral, depends mainly upon the effort of his 
own will and the education he receives. We must 
not confuse inborn characteristics with character. 
We have hereditary tendencies and characteristics, 
but not hereditary character — in that fact lies the 
opportunity of education. Professor Home states 
the distinction aptly : ' We inherit certain disposi- 
tions, tendencies, inclinations, impulses, temperaments, 
temptations ; we do not inherit our actual attainment, 
our thoughts, deeds, habits, and the conscious life 
of man. The son of an inebriate will be weak 
physically ; he does not inherit the appetite for 
liquor, unless perchance such a craving was already 
congenital in his ancestry ; least of all does he in- 
herit what he will do with such craving. At this 
point the influence of the third element, the personal 



74 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

will, appears. Character is an acquisition, not an 
inheritance ; capacity is an inheritance, not an 
acquisition. The moral attainments of civilised man 
are a product of his will, not of his inheritance. Our 
character is what we become within our inherited 
limits.' ^ 

We should not regret too much our inability to 
transmit the effects produced in individuals by means 
of education. It is to the advantage of the race that 
it should be so. It frustrates, no doubt, the hope 
that the results of education in the individual may 
be preserved by heredity for posterity, that the 
capacity of the race may be improved by the cumu- 
lative effect of education from generation to generation, 
and that the education of the present generation may 
increase the educability of the brain and nervous 
system of generations yet to come. It involves, too, a 
fresh start being made in each individual case, as if 
our ancestors had received no education. We have 
to begin the education of each generation at the same 
point. As Professor Adams wittily puts it, ' Each 
baby must begin at scratch.' ^ 

But there the disadvantage ends, for the non- 
transmissibility of acquired modifications means that 
we have in every case the opportunity to determine 
which characteristics we desire to produce. If moral 
qualities were innate, not products of education and 



* Idealism in Education, p. 32. 

^ The Evolution of Educational Theory, p. 56. (Macmillan & Co. 
The whole of this book is worthy of study. 



EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 75 

environment, if the development of each child 
depended solely on the virtues and vices he had 
inherited, if bad characteristics, being congenital, 
could not be removed, then every dream of human 
progress would be in vain. Education loses, no doubt, 
the aid of hereditary virtues, but this is more than 
compensated by the loss of hereditary vices. The 
task of the educator would be enormously increased 
if children coming from bad homes inherited in every 
case the badness acquired by their parents. 

Our study of the relation of education to heredity 
has shown us that education is one of the most 
important contrivances of civilisation to enable human 
beings to advance independently of heredity. This 
furnishes one more argument for doing everything 
in our power to improve our means of education in 
the broadest sense, including every endeavour to 
develop mankind in the school, in the home, in the 
workshop, in the nation, and in the world at large. 



CHAPTER VIII 

EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 

In Chapter IV we showed that every organism is 
dependent for growth — indeed for very existence — 
upon adaptation to its surroundings. Nature demands 
that an organism must be adjusted to its environment 
before it can live alone. Hence every animal has a 
period of infancy and helplessness that it may be 
prepared for its environment. In the case of man 
the period of dependence is much longer than in the 
case of other animals, because he has to be adjusted 
to a much more complex physical, social, and spiritual 
environment. The development of body, mind, and 
character in man during this period is partly due 
to the forces of growth from within, and partly to 
the forces of environment, including education, from 
without. 

The progress of society is made through the 
reciprocal forces of the environment stamping its 
influence on the race and the race reacting on the 
environment, receiving its mental and moral sustenance 
from it, and striving to conquer aU influences in it 
detrimental to the well-being of its members. If 



EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 77 

the adjustment is not made, or if the environment is 
not suitable for nutrition, growth, and development, 
then follow many of the pathological conditions of 
society to which we have drawn attention. 

As with the race so with the individual. The 
success or failure of individuals in life, and the fullness 
of their self-realisation, are determined largely by 
their power of adjustment to environment, and of 
utilising it to draw forth their capacities. It is the 
province of education to guide the process of adjust- 
ment, and to place the young en rapport with their 
environment. Without the assistance of education 
the child of to-day would have to depend, as his 
primitive forefather did, upon his own experience, 
and upon the knocks and bruises of environment for 
the lessons he learned. 

Sometimes the school fails to give the young the 
kind of preparation demanded by their particular 
environment. The instruction and methods, for 
instance, of the schools in our crowded cities give too 
little scope for nature study, for constructive work, 
and for healthy recreation — all necessary antidotes 
to the restricted environment of the town child. Our 
rural schools copy, in the main, the defects of their 
town neighbours ; they neglect the valuable educational 
material supplied by, and required for, their surround- 
ings, and so they hasten the drift of the population 
from country to town, w^hich is giving rise to many 
of our modern industrial and social problems. 

But education has to prepare the child to be able 



78 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

to adapt liimseK not merely to his present but to 
any future environment in which he may be placed. 
By suitable prevision education may prevent shock, 
surprise, and even failure when the youth leaves school 
and enters the larger arena of the world. Many of our 
social problems are due to the inability of individuals 
to adjust themselves to a new or rapidly changing 
environment. Workers, for instance, trained for a 
certain industrial environment which changes, may 
not have sufficient initiative and adaptability to 
readjust themselves to the new conditions, and 
they may drop into the ranks of the unfit and the 
poor. 

Our educational system must afford a fuller 
preparation for the environment of the world, and be 
more closely related to practical life. This is no new 
conception. It was the cause of the revolt of the 
grammar schools in Scotland against the exclusively 
classical curriculum in vogue a century and a haK 
ago, and of the establishment throughout the country 
of academies with modern courses of study. It was 
an important part of the message of Pestalozzi and 
Froebel to the world, and it has been the inspiring 
force, consciously or unconsciously, of nearly every 
large educational movement since their day. It is 
the cause of much of the educational unrest at the 
present time, and it is in obedience to it that we 
are now seriously endeavouring to organise a national 
system of practical and vocational education. 

There is general agreement among educationists, 



EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 79 

at least in Britain, that vocational education, in the 
sense of direct training for the particular lifework 
or economic environment lying before the pupils, should 
not be given till the completion of primary school 
education. The child must be fitted to live in the 
moral and intellectual surroundings of modern civilisa- 
tion before being given a special training for his future 
occupation. To do otherwise would be to interfere 
with the full development of the child in the name of 
education. 

Nothing could be more harmful to the develop- 
ment of the future worker, and of his ability 
to live alone in self-dependence, than premature 
specialisation or vocational training. The proper 
business of the primary school is to develop potential 
efficiency and capacity for service which may be 
used not in one but in any future calling. The three 
K's, Enghsh, Geography, and History should always 
be, as we have said, the most important subjects 
in the primary school, but they should be taught in 
a more practical way than is usually the case at present, 
and more attention should be given in the primary 
school to training the body and the active powers of 
the child, and to social or civic training. 

But about the age of twelve a distinct change takes 
place in the mind of the child, and it should be reflected 
in the education planned for this period. The child 
is approaching adolescence, and there is a growing 
impulse towards the realities of life which, in the 
children of the w^orking classes, manifests itself in 



80 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

a desire to leave school and get to work. Yet the 
youth is not fit either physically or mentally for the 
work of life, and it is necessary in the interests of 
himself and of society that he should continue his 
education for a year or two longer. During this 
period, say from twelve to fourteen years of age, the 
education given should have a more direct bearing 
on the economic environment of the pupil. The 
education should be at most only semi-vocational, and 
should give instruction and practice in the processes 
fundamental to one of the typical groups of industries 
for which workers have to be trained — namely, com- 
merce, industry, agriculture, and housekeeping.^ 

The education given after that stage in day and 
evening continuation schools should be distinctly 
practical and vocational, giving a knowledge of the 
materials and the various operations of the industry 
in which the youth is engaged, an acquaintance with 
its history and the course of its development, and 
giving generally a width of training which the work- 
shop practice of the industry is least able to give. 
This subject will be treated more fully in the next 
chapter. 

To enable man to adjust himself to his environment 
is, we have said, one of the great tasks of the school. 



* The Scotch Education Department acted on sound educational 
principles when it instituted the Supplementary Courses, as they are 
called — The Commercial, The Industrial, The Agricultural, and The 
Household Management Courses — for the last two years of pupils who 
have to leave school to become workers at the age of fourteen. See also 
p. 110. 



EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 81 

But education does much more than this ; it enables 
man to adjust, in turn, his environment to meet 
his physical, social, and spiritual needs. Man and his 
environment are not fixed entities independent of each 
other ; there is a constant action and reaction taking 
place between them, and in the process both are 
moulded and modified. Complete equilibrium between 
man and his environment is never attained, and if 
it were progress would cease. It is for this reason 
that savage races are essentially unprogressive. Their 
adaptation, we might almost say submission, to their 
surroundings is little different from that of the lower 
animal to its physical environment. They are with- 
out the divine discontent which changes the environ- 
ment. But as man rises above the savage state, 
and as his mind and will become more highly developed 
by education, he gains a greater power over environ- 
ment, and an increasing ability to make it minister 
to his needs. In this way a higher civilisation emerges, 
and the human race progresses towards the fullness 
of its development. 

Adaptation of mankind to environment makes 
for social conservation, but adaptation of en- 
vironment to mankind makes for social progress. 
In proportion as man through education gains 
the mastery over environment, and discovers more 
powerful means of controlling environing conditions 
in the interests of the race, greater cultural and 
economic achievements will become possible, and 
the number of those who live from hand to 



82 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

mouth, dependent for sustenance on ceaseless toil, 
will diminish. 

The function of the school is fundamentally to 
secure the development of the child through supplying 
such materials as stimulate between him and his 
environment reactions which are in Hne with right 
habits and right ideals. Education prepares the 
child for his present environment and future sur- 
roundings in the world by bringing appropriate stimuli 
(materials of instruction) to bear upon the brain to 
train it to successful habits of reaction during its 
period of growth and plasticity. Method in education 
consists in providing stimuli well suited to the 
capacities of the child — stimuli that will awaken 
interest and produce such response on his part 
as will secure his proper development. The best 
teacher is the one who is most skilful in doing 
these things. 

Environmental studies — that is, studies specially 
designed to prepare the pupil for his environment 
in the world — should play a large part in education. 
To prepare man for his physical environment educa- 
tion should give a knowledge of nature as complete 
as the period of school training will allow. To enable 
him to adjust himself to his human and social environ- 
ment, and to become a good citizen, he should be 
taught the history of his country, and get an accurate 
conception of its laws, institutions, and national and 
local government. Whatever else is taught, there 
should be a wide study of literature. It afifords a 



EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 83 

knowledge of life and of society which no other study 
can give. Through it the child can be brought into 
contact with the best thoughts, ideals, and achieve- 
ments, which constitute the spiritual environment 
of the race. Through it he can associate with 
the great personalities in history, literature, religion, 
science, and art, and learn the secret of their 
greatness. 

The view of the educative process we have put 
forward shows that it is not mere instruction and 
receptivity. Adjustment of the individual to environ- 
ment and modification of the environment to fit the 
individual are not accomplished by a mechanical but 
by a self-active process ; they require activity of 
mind and will. Life in the world is not a matter of 
contemplation but of action, it is not abstract but 
concrete, being made up of daily and hourly acts. 
So with education which gives the preparation for 
life ; it comes through what the child does, not through 
what he thinks and feels apart from action. Right 
conduct, or, as we would say, right adjustment to 
the world, is the end of education. 

Educators are apt to forget the truth enunciated by 
Pestalozzi and Froebel, that seK-activity is the prime 
condition of the development of mind and of the 
realisation of capacities. Unless every impression con- 
veyed by the teacher leads to self-expression in some 
form or other by the pupil, the educational process is 
incomplete. The impression must be wrought by the 
self-activity of the pupil into the very fibre of his being, 

G 2 



84 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

and not remain simply a matter of consciousness.^ 
It is becoming a commonplace of educational precept, 
if not of practice, that the teacher may teach the child, 
but the child must educate himself through the active 
exercise of his body, mind, and will. 

Three further thoughts are suggested by our study 
of education and environment. One is that education 
is more necessary now than in former generations. 
More intensive and more scientific methods of 
production, and quicker and more regular means of 
transport, are producing changes in our economic 
and social environment at an unprecedented rate. 
Education must keep pace with these changes, and 
lessen the difficulty of readjustment to the changing 
environment. Society, we believe, is progressing 
steadily in all these changes towards a goal of good. 
It is the mission of education to maintain and direct 
that progress. 

Another thought suggested by our present study 
is the wide scope and numerous agencies of education. 
Not merely the school, but the whole of the vast en- 
vironment of man educates him in the broadest sense. 
As Emerson said, the whole world is required for the 
education of a human being. There is not a situation 
in life but leaves its influence on his education. 
Moreover, every period of life is educative. The few 
years of school life provide an important but small 

1 James states this with his usual directness : ' An impression 
which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears, and in no way modilfies 
his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physically 
incomplete. Its motor consequences are what clinch it.' 



EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 85 

part of our education. During them we can accom- 
plish only a few of the more definite and formal adjust- 
ments to our environment, the other adjustments 
go on as long as life and impressionability remain. 

Finally, since environment plays such an impor- 
tant part, the State should do everything in its 
power to prevent the lives of the young, at least, 
being spent in an unfavourable environment. It is 
this consideration that justifies the State in seeking 
to create an ideal educational environment in the 
school, in insisting that the building should be of 
good, but not expensive, architecture, that it should 
be on an open site with plenty of light and sunshine, 
that it should exemplify in its construction every 
hygienic principle, and that all the furnishings, while 
simple, should be chosen with as great care for their 
artistic influence as are the furnishings of a cultured 
home. It is for this reason, too, that the State insists 
that the teachers, who constitute the social and 
spiritual environment of the school, must be in advance 
of the social and ethical standards of the community. 

It is for a similar reason that municipalities and 
philanthropic individuals should attack and improve 
the wretched environment of the slums. It is hopeless 
to expect to exert generally an uplifting influence 
on dwellers there so long as they live in dirty, squalid 
surroundings. Because of the misery of their environ- 
ment, not because of their innate depravity, they 
supply the larger part of our pauperism, vice, and 
drunkenness. This goes on in an endless cycle ; as 



86 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

the parents are, so the children become, and the same 
sad state of affairs is perpetuated from generation 
to generation. But it is not enough simply to clear 
away slum dwellings. If we were to remove the 
inhabitants of the slums to wholesome dwellings 
to-morrow, they would soon make slums of them. 
The disease is mainly a spiritual one, and we must 
attack it at its source, which is the slum mind. It 
can be remedied only by better moral and intellectual 
education, combined with the philanthropic endeavours 
to which we have just referred.^ 

In so far as the home neglects, or is unable to 
discharge, its parental and educational functions, we 
must tend and train the children in creches and day 
nurseries and kindergartens till they are of school age. 
We cannot teach them there the three R's, but we 
can protect them from the harmful influences of 
their environment during the daytime at least, we 
can train them to habits of cleanliness, and we can 
train them to play, and to love nature. In these and 
a hundred other ways we can influence the inner life 
of these children, and help to lay the foundation of 
good health, good morals, and good citizenship in the 
years to come. 

^ See National Education and National Life (especially chap, v.), 
by J. E. G. de Montmorency. (Swan, Sonnenschein & Co.) 



CHAPTER IX 

EDUCATION AND PRACTICAL LIFE 

Among primitive peoples education was entirely 
practical and informal. It was obtained from the 
home and the activities centred in it, and from the 
human and physical environment of life. With rising 
civilisation and the growth of social institutions — 
the State, the Church, and the Vocation — the educative 
forces became more widely distributed, and the sphere 
of informal education was enlarged. Supplementing 
and reinforcing one another, these various institu- 
tions performed almost the total work of training 
the young. The idea of formal education given in 
school was of comparatively late development ; more- 
over the education was given only to the few, and 
had little bearing on the ordinary activities of life. 
With the progress of society the older institutions 
have been weakened as educative agencies, and 
there has been a steady transference of training 
from the informal to the formal sphere. The 
school has been called upon to take the place of the 
older agencies of practical training that have failed, 
and not merely to provide a general education 



88 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

as a supplement to the training for practical work 
obtained elsewhere. 

If this view be correct, and it can hardly be 
seriously questioned, we see that the present-day 
demand for fundamental reform of school work, 
by the inclusion of practical as well as cultural 
studies, is inevitable, and is a consequence of the 
gradual process of social evolution. It is coming 
from two distinct sources — the pedagogic and the 
industrial. 

Ever since the Renaissance there has been a growing 
movement in educational theory towards realism, 
naturalism, and general pragmatism. The mental 
powers to be cultivated by education are no longer 
considered to be merely knowing, feeling, and willing. 
These processes are not now regarded as complete 
without their expression in action. In every normal 
child there is a preference of doing to thinking. 
Educational theory has been slow to realise the 
importance of this in developing the ideals of 
duty, self-control, and work. The impressions and 
ideas conveyed in education are not complete 
unless they lead to appropriate action ; if we 
stop short of this we cannot ensure positive and 
lasting results. In skilful teaching, self-expression by 
the pupils always follows impression. By increased 
utilisation of the impulse to activity we are now 
giving greater concreteness to our teaching, we 
are removing the school from its position of isola- 
tion, and we are bringing about a more real and 



PRACTICAL EDUCATION 89 

organic relation between life within and without the 
school.^ 

Side by side with these influences there have been 
taking place, especially during the last three or four 
generations, social and economic changes of vast 
educational importance. We refer to the changes 
following on the discovery of steam-power and the 
apphcation of science to industry. The effects of 
the industrial revolution on the school were described 
in a previous chapter (Chapter V). We have had 
to bring our educational aims into closer harmony 
with present industrial conditions. As the home and 
the vocation no longer play the part they did in 
providing practical education, the school has been 
called upon to do more now than develop merely the 
intellectual and moral power of the people. Modern 
industrial conditions necessitate that the educational 
foundations of productive as well as intellectual 
capacity, of ability to do as well as to think, should 
be laid in the school. Only if this is done can the 
school play the part of which it is capable in social 
betterment, and in the alleviation of many of the 
deplorable consequences of our modern industrial 
system. 

It has been estimated that about fifty per cent, 
of the working power in this country is wasted or not 
brought into use. It is possible by suitable education 



^ Tolstoi maintained that the more a people advances the more 
does true education desert the traditional school for the region of real 
life outside. 



90 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

so to train the intellectual and productive powers 
of the young as to raise the intelligence and earning 
power of the people as a whole in the next generation. 
Consider what this involves. Every advance in the 
general standard of efficiency lightens the labour of 
man, yields him a more abundant return for his toil, 
raises him from a condition of constant struggle for 
the bare necessaries of life to a higher plane of material 
comfort, and increases his opportunities for leisure 
and mental, moral, and physical improvement. No 
better investment can be made by the nation than 
to give every child the opportunity to secure such 
an education. 

For centuries we have recognised the necessity 
of a practical training for the professions, and a 
generation ago the industrial necessities of the country 
forced the establishment of technical colleges for 
the training of industrial leaders, but the idea of 
giving a practical education to the great body of 
industrial workers is new and is presenting many 
difficult problems. It necessitates a transition from 
educational ideals which were known and deimite to 
others which are wider but as yet ill-defined. It 
involves remodelling to a considerable extent the 
material, method, and spirit of public education ; it 
means placing emphasis on thought-processes and 
ideas that will lead to future achievement ; it means 
making memorisation and mere taskwork give place 
to interest and self-control ; it means giving due 
scope and suitable training to the natural activity of 



PRACTICAL EDUCATION 91 

the child, so that the classroom may become in reality 
his workshop in which he will acquire habits that will 
help to give efficiency to his after-life. In educational 
reform cautious innovations and clear thinking are the 
need of the moment. 

There is general agreement that direct training 
for the particular lifework lying before the pupils — 
even if that were known — should not be given till 
the completion of the primary curriculum at the 
age of thirteen or fourteen, and that there should 
be a great increase after that stage in the present 
opportunities for vocational training. We recognise 
that a fundamental error has been made in treating 
the child too much as a psychological rather than a 
social being. 

Nevertheless, nothing could be more shortsighted 
or more harmful to future development than a pre- 
maturely "specialised training. Vocational interests 
should not be allowed to invade the period sacred 
to the development of child nature. Children have 
a right to their childhood, and it is our duty to 
see that they are not robbed of it. We must allow 
them to grow out of it before we begin to train them 
for the occupations they may follow through life. 
If we start too soon we shall train them to grow into 
machines, not into men and women. But there is 
a vast difference between training for hfe and training 
for a definite calling ; one is imiversal, the other 
special. The business of the primary school is to 
prepare for social and intellectual rather than 



92 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

industrial life, to develop potential efficiency and 
capacity for service which may be reahsed in any 
future calling. 

The difference between vocational and practical 
teaching must be clearly recognised. It is the latter 
we are meanwhile advocating. Primary education 
requires a more practical turn, requires a closer adapta- 
tion of its methods to those of nature, to those bv 
which the mind of the race has developed. It needs 
to give more freedom for the expression of the child's 
own nature, to give greater scope to his love of activity, 
to connect all the work of the school with the realities 
of the child's daily life, and to make fuUer use of the 
various activities and aspects of Hfe that interest 
him at his particular stage of development. This is 
what we mean by practical education in the primary 
school. 

The reform required in primary education is not 
so much a new curriculum as a better realisation of 
the possibilities of the present one. We need a change 
in the spirit rather than in the material of education. 
There should be a better balance between the practical 
and the intellectual aim of education. The value of 
knowledge has been overrated in the past, and the 
great psychological truth that the hands and eyes 
are the chief avenues to the child-mind has not yet 
got a sufficient hold in school methods. We need 
all subjects in the curriculum to be taught in a more 
concrete and practical way. One of the most baleful 
features of teaching beyond the infant stage has been 



PRACTICAL EDUCATION 93 

its tendency towards the formal, the abstract, and 
the bookish. SpelHng and reading have been taught 
too commonly as exercises in conventional forms, 
geography has been taught as topography, and history 
as chronology. 

Coming from general principles to details, we may 
say that in primary education four things at least 
should be aimed at : — 

1. Training of the mind. 

2. Training of the body. 

3. Training of the motor-activities. 

4. Training for social and civil Hfe. 

Until quite recent times the whole of the energies of 
the school were devoted to the first division — namely, 
the three R's, and English, Geography, and History. 
These subjects are very important, but according to 
present-day opinion they do not satisfy the deepest 
instincts and interests of childhood — namely, the 
instinct for play, the instinct for doing, and the 
instinct for social life. We have scientific evidence 
now that concentration on purely intellectual training 
is a hindrance to the cultivation even of the intellectual 
powers. It is claimed that in the education of 
physically defective children most rapid progress is 
made by giving instruction in the open air, by affording 
liberal opportunity for play and for motor training, 
and by devoting but one-half of the total school-time 
to mental effort. Is it not possible that what is true 
of the physically defective may be equally true 
of the physically sound ? At any rate, something 



94 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

should be done to diminish the number of those who 
leave our primary schools as failures, who have never 
been interested by the work, who have never caught 
the gleam of inspiration from it, nor thought of the 
school except as a place of weariness and detention. 

The Kindergarten turns the activity and play 
of children to educational account, and the modern 
practice in infant teaching is right in making the 
technical arts of reading, writing, and counting spring 
from kindergarten methods. What we want is to 
introduce the same spirit into all our instruction, to 
' kindergartenise ' all our teaching. We need a more 
practical treatment of all subjects at all stages. 
Receptive and passive methods have played too large a 
part in school work in the past. We have proceeded on 
the assumption that mere book-knowledge and mental 
gymnastics are of first-rate importance. It is the 
power to employ our knowledge in a manner useful 
to ourselves and to the world that matters. Hence 
in teaching every subject there should be a basis 
of concrete experience laid by the employment of 
the child's active powers. This will form a sure 
foundation for the subsequent rationalising process 
which will give, in due time, the universal relations 
of things. 

Practical teaching will render at least two things 
necessary. In the first place, it will involve reducing 
the present ' grotesque size of classes ' ; ^ and in the 

^ See p. 15 of The Schools and Social Reform, by the Unionist Social 
Reform Committee on Education. (London: John Murray.) 



PRACTICAL EDUCATION 95 

second place, it will necessitate a more rational arrange- 
ment of school furniture than the parallel rows of 
fixed desks of the present day. Our schoolrooms 
should be furnished for doing and not solely for 
listening. Until this is done it is useless to talk of 
practical education, or the training of motor-activity.^ 
The passive ideal and dead uniformity of methods 
that have so long prevailed in education have 
materialised themselves in equally monotonous rooms 
and furnishings, giving no scope for turning to 
educational use the motor impulses of children. 
School architects and school furnishers must adapt 
their plans and designs more closely to the modern 
ideals and needs of practical education. 

^ Dr. Sykes, Director of Technical Education in Teachers' College, 
Columbia University, New York, says : ' I have a vision of an elementary 
schoolroom. It is not by choice the vision of the schoolroom of my 
own childhood — the formal rows of seats, the bare ugly walls and 
windows, the languid youngsters droning over abstractions. ... It 
is rather the vision of a schoolroom that makes you think of the corner 
of a kitchen, sewing-room, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop . . . the 
windows opening on the school garden, and the teacher — well, someone 
who can do things ' {Teachers' College Record, September 1911, p. 9). 



CHAPTER X 

EDUCATION AND PRACTICAL LIFE (CONTINUED) — 
PRACTICAL TEACHING IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 

In the preceding chapter we saw that pragmatism 
has entered the field of education, and is proclaiming 
a new message to teachers. It is not necessary to 
discuss at length the application of that message to 
the method of teaching all the subjects included in 
the four divisions of elementary education given on 
p. 93. Every child when he leaves school should 
have a command of language, spoken and written, 
and of numbers — the so-called three R's. These are 
universal tools necessary in every walk of life, but 
they should not be prematurely forced upon the 
child. They will be acquired with ease when the 
mind demands their use, and in most cases that will 
not be before the age of seven. They are conventional 
arts which do not interest young children who cannot 
appreciate their value for future use. They should 
be given at first an extraneous interest through stories 
and games. 

The child should get constant oral practice 
both formally and informally in the use of language, 



PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 97 

and in building up his vocabulary. He should 
get training in saying plainly and directly in 
spoken and written words whatever he has to say. 
Every lesson in every subject in the elementary school 
should also be a lesson in English. Good speech, 
clear-cut expression, and good legible writing cannot 
be obtained on other terms, and they should be the 
possession of every normal child who completes an 
elementary education. One period a day devoted 
to the study of grammar and of the English of the 
school-reader will not give ability to speak and write 
simple direct English, to read thoughtfully and with 
expression, and to appreciate good literature. Con- 
centration on masterpieces of literature, and constant 
attention in all the work of the school to correct and 
weU-defined expression, are the most effective means 
of studying language in the elementary school. 

The teaching of arithmetic, too, requires to be put 
on a more practical basis, leading to a ready com- 
mand of numbers, and to ability to think numerically, 
and to make quickly and accurately calculations 
involving the four fundamental operations. Children 
like to deal with real quantities and actual processes. 
Hence the problems of everyday life and of business, 
rather than the arithmetic of the school, should be 
taught. The teacher should rely less upon the 
text-book, and more upon problems obtained from 
business men and problems brought by the children 
from their homes. The catch-problem should be 
displaced by the problem of everyday importance. 



98 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Repeated and varied practice of this kind in funda- 
mental principles, and practical instruction at a later 
stage in the general arithmetic of business and 
industry, and in the forms and papers relating to them, 
are the work suitable to the elementary school. 

Arithmetic in industrial life goes along with 
practical measurement. Hence pupils should be 
trained to measure with common instruments, such 
as the footrule, the tape, the chain, and the calipers ; 
to weigh by means of the beam and spring balance ; and 
to find volumes by means of immersion. Practical 
measurements such as these interest the children, 
and furnish endless problems for teaching the various 
operations of arithmetic. 

The practical teaching of geography and nature 
study has been much improved in recent years, and 
an effort is being made to continue in our junior and 
senior classes the good start made in the infant 
classes. As so much has been written in recent years 
on the teaching of geography, and as the author has 
already dealt with the subject,^ he will not add to the 
literature on it now. The following concise state- 
ment by an American writer ^ is suggestive : — 

Through contact with the most fundamental 
problems that have to do with our daily life, the 
study of geography and man's relation to the earth 
on which he lives may be made real and meaningful. 

1 Pamphlet on The Practical Teaching of Geography, by Alex. Morgan. 
(London : George Philip & Son.) 

2 Arthur H. Chamberlain in the Proceedings of the National Education 
Association of the United States for the Year 1910, p. 289. 



PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 99 

Food, clothing, shelter, transportation — ail are such 
important factors in man's welfare that their study- 
is a ready introduction to the world of geography. 
Trace the raw food-products through the stages of 
soil preparation, planting, tending, harvesting, and 
the various processes of manufacture, transport- 
ation, and the like. Consider from beginning to 
end the stages through which our various articles 
of clothing pass from the raw material to the 
most intricate processes of manufacture. Study the 
growth of the abodes in which we now live through 
the evolution of cliff, cave, hollow tree-trunk, cabin, 
to homes constructed of wood or brick, of stone, 
of iron and steel, until the structures of to-day readily 
withstand the ravages of fire. View in detail the 
journey of these materials from the forest, the mine, 
the mill, the quarry, the kiln, as through one process 
after another they find their way from distant lands 
to our own doors. 

These things are not studied as ends in themselves 
so much as means to ends. In no way can a know- 
ledge of physical conditions be so well acquired as 
through these channels. By taking up the study of 
wheat from the standpoint of food, or cotton in its 
relation to clothing, there is a constant working 
back to climate, soil, location, and all that enters 
into making of value a knowledge of physical, industrial, 
and commercial geography. . . . 

The study of man's relation to his envuonment 
is easily made as interesting as a fairy story. The 
work of rivers and glaciers, of winds and tides and 
ocean currents, the cause of deserts, the significance 
of lakes and seas, of plains and mountains, of valleys 
and forests — all may be appreciated through rational 
interpretation. . . . 

Through these and similar channels the student 
is led to see and appreciate his place in society. He 

H 2 



100 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

acquires a fund of real geographical knowledge per- 
taining to his own and to other countries that can, 
in his short life in the primary school, be had in no 
other way. 

And of facts, locations, populations, climate, 
productions, industries, manners and customs, he 
secures a more intensive understanding than should 
his entire time be devoted to the ordinary method of 
fact-gathering. 

Just as geography reveals to the chiM the world 
of the present, and the sort of wor^ xn which he 
must live and work, so history reveals the world of 
the past, how mankind has lived and thought and 
worked in it, and how the race has through its work 
grown in power, in knowledge, and in liberty. Such 
instruction is necessary to prepare the child to meet 
the world, and to play with intelligence and efficiency 
his part in it. For this purpose school history must 
give less attention to wars and rumours of wars, and 
more to the achievements of men who, by their 
heroism and their great intellectual and moral power, 
have improved the social, material, and moral con- 
ditions of the nation. 

Much of the content of history is beyond the 
understanding of children, and to give concreteness 
to the teaching it should begin with the study of 
current events, and of local and industrial history. 
The study of the development and perfection 
of means of transit by land and sea which have 
vastly increased our commerce, and of the in- 
vention of labour-saving machines which have 



PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 101 

revolutionised our industries, and are playing so 
important a part in social progress, should be a 
prominent part of the teaching of history at every 
stage. This will arouse more interest, will give more 
real culture, and will bring the child nearer to the 
sources of the wonderful growth of our country than 
will any amount of instruction regarding the nation's 
wars or monarchical succession. In the practical 
teaching of history the acting of historical scenes 
with suitable but inexpensive dresses, weapons, &c., 
should always form an important part. 

Physical education includes everything connected 
with the care of the body, so that it may be made 
healthy and fit for the service of the mind and for 
the performance of duty in the world. Mental retarda- 
tion and moral weakness, generally attributed to 
causes beyond our reach, are often due to physical 
causes which may be removed or alleviated by suitable 
education. Physical education means more than 
training the body. It includes instruction in the laws 
of health and sanitation as affecting ourselves and 
society, in the value of simple well-prepared food, 
and in the importance of temperance and regularity 
in aU our daily habits. 

We have not yet reahsed the educational im- 
portance of free play and organised play or games 
in addition to formal gymnastics, and the necessity 
of abundance of room for physical activity both 
inside and outside the school. We have not grasped 
the full educational significance of Groos' statement : 



102 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

* Animals do not play because they are young, 
they are young in order that they may play.' We 
have not had the courage yet to clear the floors 
of the classrooms of the rows of fixed desks. But 
there is an influence at work remodeUing our ideas 
of the nature and requirements of physical education. 
This new spirit is manifesting itseK in medical 
inspection, school clinics, school nurses, school dentists, 
school dinners and the many other schemes for making 
the best use of the few short years of compulsory 
education to give the children, especially of the poor, 
the opportunity, which is their due, of leading healthy 
and efficient lives. 

There is one branch of primary education that 
has been subject to more than the usual amount of 
misconception and erroneous treatment. We refer 
to the various forms of educational handwork — 
drawing, clay-modelling, woodwork, metal work, 
sewing, &c. Many teachers and others are still 
at sea regarding the fundamental ideas under- 
lying hand-and-eye training. They see in it only 
a form of industrial work and a preparation for trade 
training. Most emphatically its aim is not vocational 
but liberal education, not the premature production 
of tradesmen or factory hands, but the training of 
more efficient men and women, who will be better 
instruments of social service through the cultivation 
of powers which would otherwise lie dormant. 

The true motive for the introduction of manual 
activities into education lies in the nature of the child- 



PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 103 

mind. The active instinct in childhood is as strong 
as the play instinct. A child prefers doing to thinking, 
seeing and handling things to hearing or reading about 
them. He loves tools, and loves to be doing things 
with them. Education must follow nature, and utilise 
at every stage the motor impulses and interests which 
are the inheritance of the race. 

Much greater stress should be laid on the practical 
and constructive arts in the work of the primary 
school. Instead of getting an hour or an hour and 
a half a week in the infant and supplementary classes, 
they should get that amount of time each day through 
the entire period of elementary education.^ It is 
wrong even for physiological reasons to postpone 
manual training till elementary education is complete ; 
that is, till the age of twelve or thirteen. If the 
fine co-ordinations of the muscles of the hand and 
fingers, wrist and arm, are not secured before that 
age, there will be great difficulty in securing them 
at a later age. 

Even the so-called purely intellectual part of 
education derives benefit from manual work. A 
Committee of the Unionist Parliamentary Party 
have been investigating the matter, and they say : 
' The local authorities that have developed it (hand- 
work), as have several during the last few years, are 

^ See Beport of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education 
on Attendance at Continuation Schools, p. 53 (Cd. 4757. Published 
by His Majesty's Stationery Office). A further Report (Cd. 6849) deals 
verv fully with the whole question of Educational Handwork, especially 
as a necessary part of secondary education. 



104 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

realising its good effect. The Committee, therefore, 
recommend that manual instruction be essential to 
every day-school. It must not be regarded as a special 
subject ; the mere provision of a few classes is not 
enough. It must be the very life of the school.'^ 
Dewey makes manual work the starting-point and 
centre of education, and he is not wrong. It should 
be correlated in every way possible with the general 
work of the school. In that way the instruction 
in that work wiU be made more interesting, more 
concrete, and more lasting. 

After all, whether a subject is cultural or practical 
depends largely upon the spirit in which it is taught. 
Manual training should be taught by trained teachers 
thoroughly quahfied on the technical side. Moreover, 
it should not be left entirely to visiting teachers, nor 
should it be given only in a special workroom. There 
is a great deal of manual work that could be done in 
the ordinary classroom,^ especially if the fixed parallel 
rows of desks were done away with. Then would 
handwork take its rightful place in education, not so 



^ The Schools and Social Reform, p. 15. (London: John Murray.) 
Dr. Henry H. Belfield, of Chicago, in making a report to the United 
States Department of Labour came to a similar conclusion. He said 
that evidence collected in America and England showed that pupils 
who get manual training as a part of their school work in the regular 
school hours accomplish as much academic work as pupils who devote 
all the school time to the latter. The facts, he says, justify the con- 
clusion that from one to two hours per day, according to the age of the 
pupils and the character of the work, should be given to the manual 
side of education. 

2 See Modern Views on Education, by Thiselton Mark, p. 143. 
(London : Collins.) 



PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 105 

much as a new subject but as a new method entering 
into and reforming and vitahsing the teaching of all 
subjects. 

More rapid progress would have been made by 
the new ideas had educational handwork not fallen 
under the baleful influence of faulty teaching. Even 
into its concrete processes there has entered a narrow 
formalism. It has been taught on an exercise basis 
rather than on a productive basis. By means of a 
cast-iron progression of tool exercises, and a pedantic 
sequence of models, it has been taught just as formally 
as arithmetic or reading or spelling. Children are not 
interested in whittling and sawing and planing, and 
making of joints or stitches, and other manipulative 
exercises according to rule. Doing something for 
which they experience no present need, simply because 
it will be useful in some future operation, is not sound 
method, is not parallel to life's training, and is not 
the way in which the race learnt its industries. Mr. 
Thiselton Mark puts his finger unerringly on the 
defect : ' At present,' he says, ' too much of the time 
spent in woodwork by the boy between twelve and 
fourteen is consumed in making useless miniature 
representations of objects rather than objects of use. 
A model that works, such as boys of this age some- 
times make, is a different matter. A good balance, 
a signal with levers, a model of a crane, rank with 
objects of use. But with respect to the making of 
miniature objects, merely to incorporate certain 
" exercises," many woodwork instructors of to-day 



106 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

are saying : "A model is an invention of the Evil 
One." ' 1 

We must devise our handwork courses so that at 
every stage the children will have real problems to 
face, will have to a large extent actual things to make 
arising out of their everyday needs and interests, 
will have something to do or to make which they 
recognise as definitely useful for themselves, or for 
their homes, or for the school or school system.^ Let 
us not be too much afraid of doing work in school 
useful for others : in this lies the germ of the idea of 
social service. After all, the real test is not whether 
the work is utilitarian or non-utilitarian, but whether 
it is essentially educative in character and spirit. 
Let us break away from the artificially graded 
exercises in manual training, and the making of 
decorative knick-knacks, and let us give the pupils 
some introduction to the practical utility of their 
handiwork. Let us pass, in short, from the 
disciplinary conception of the sloyd exercises to the 
practical conception of the arts and crafts, and in so 
doing we shall shift the emphasis from the disciplinary 
value of the exercise to the concrete value of the work 
in carrying out the constructive idea of the child. 

1 Modern Views on Education, p. 123. 

* In some towns in the United States 10 per cent, of the pupils' 
manual training time is devoted to the production of school equipment, 
not for the sake of economy, but to give the test of economic value to 
the work, to give an opportunity for co-operative effort, and to enforce 
the lesson of efficient utilisation of time and materials. 



CHAPTER XI 

EDUCATION AND PRACTICAL LIFE (CONTINUED) — 
PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 

We have not dealt as yet with the last two years of 
elementary school life — namely, from twelve to 
fourteen years of age. This is a difficult period in 
education. A distinct change takes place in the 
mind and nature of the child as he approaches 
adolescence. Life is beginning to grip him. The 
development of the social impulses which takes place 
about this time manifests itself in a greater interest 
in the social life and the activities of the outside 
world. Even newspaper records of current events 
begin to interest him. The toy play which pleased 
his childish fancy no longer satisfies, and it gives 
place to interest in organised play and group games. 
The growing impulse towards adult activities and the 
reaHties of life leads to a desire to leave school and 
get to work. Besides, the elementary curriculum 
proper, aiming at developing the whole nature of the 
child, is fairly well completed by this time, and parents 
and children alike often feel that the last two years 
of compulsory school-life are not profitably spent. 



108 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

And yet the child is not fit either physically or 
mentally for the work of life, and it is absolutely 
necessary, in the interests of himself and of society, 
that the child should continue at school for a year 
or two longer. 

The difficulty is to devise an education giving, as 
Carlyle said, ' a training in practicality,' adapted to 
the special needs of children who may be expected 
to constitute in due time the rank and file of the 
industrial army. In response to the waking work- 
impulse education must provide forms of practical 
training which the children can see will be of use to 
them in after-life. The education given should be 
semi-vocational, and should connect itself not only with 
life but with livelihood ; the life-career motive wiU 
interest the pupils, although it cannot be brought 
into play with full effect for a year or two yet. During 
this period liberal education should be continued, 
but the practical training should no longer be merely 
incidental or subordinate to it. Our aims at this 
stage are to train — first, the efficient producer ; second, 
the intelligent citizen ; and third, the educated man 
and woman capable of appreciating the ideal things 
of life. These aims settle the elements of the education 
appropriate to this period : first, the practical ; second, 
the civic ; third, the cultural. 

In the last-mentioned category the study of the 
masterpieces of literature should predominate. Other 
subjects of a general character, such as arithmetic, 
should be put on a purely practical basis, and in the 



PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 109 

history instruction the study of current events, and 
of local history, and of the history of the evolution 
of industry, should play a large part. 

In the second category the instruction in civics 
should have as its aim to give the pupils a sympathetic 
knowledge, political and industrial, of their own city, 
country, and national government, so that the out- 
come may be an intelligent comprehension of the duties 
of citizenship and of the obhgations of social service. 

In the first category the practical education of the 
child between twelve and fourteen years of age should 
not be vocational in the sense of training for efficiency 
in a particular calling. The child is not ready either 
mentally or physically for this. Moreover, it would 
presuppose, and probably restrict, the choice of a life- 
calling before the interests and talents of the child 
were fully known. The training should be at most 
semi- vocational, and should give instruction and general 
skill in the processes fundamental to the more or 
less universal occupations, and also a knowledge 
of the general facts of economic and industrial Ufe, 
and of the possibilities and necessities of the various 
crafts and their relations to one another. 

Such a training would give a general under- 
standing of the methods, possibilities, and social 
significance of modern industry, and it would impart 
a meaning and a motive to the work of the school. 
A certain measure of preparation for some future 
vocation would undoubtedly follow, although the voca- 
tional aim would never be dominant. The training 



110 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

would help to discover the tastes and aptitudes of the 
pupils for certain kinds of work, it would thus give 
much needed assistance in the wise choice of a calling, 
and it would lay a suitable foundation for that calling 
whatever it might be. 

It is fortunate that the adoption of a uniform course 
of practical education for all elementary school pupils 
entering adolescence is not essential, for the arrange- 
ment of such a course, even if it were desirable, would 
be beset by great difficulties. If we could analyse the 
multitude of trades and occupations of our highly 
civilised life and discover the processes fundamental 
to them all, then these processes might be made the 
staple of the practical education for this period of 
childhood. There are sufficient points of similarity, 
however, in the materials, processes, and products of 
the occupations of mankind to warrant us in arranging 
them in five fundamental groups : — 

1. The agricultural. 

2. The industrial. 

3. The commercial. 

4. The household. 

5. The professional. 

We may omit the last from our consideration as it 
does not belong to the elementary school stage ; but 
pupils who have to leave school at the age of fourteen 
should have during their last two years at school the 
opportunity of getting a practical course of education 
along the lines of one or other of the first four groups ac- 
cording to their tastes, or their probable future vocations, 



PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 111 

or the prevailing vocations of the locality. At least half 
the school-day should be devoted to the course selected, 
the rest of the day being devoted to the intellectual 
and civic instruction already mentioned. 

A choice between the above occupational courses 
would only be possible in schools with a sufficient number 
of pupils, and there is much to be said for establishing 
in populous areas separate schools for children from 
twelve to fourteen years of age, as has been done in 
Edinburgh and other cities. 

Scotland has led the way in providing suitable 
courses of practical training supplementary to the 
prior general education given to pupils under twelve 
years of age. Since 1903 the Scotch Education 
Department has given special grants for children 
between twelve and fourteen years of age getting instruc- 
tion in Supplementary Courses, the nature of which is 
outlined in the Code of Regulations for Day Schools.^ 

The Department through its inspectors sanctions 
the granting of merit certificates to pupils who are 
fourteen years of age, and who have completed satis- 
factorily one of the Supplementary Courses of instruc- 
tion. But even fourteen is too early for a child to 
enter upon his lifework, although the law camiot compel 
him to remain longer at school. The doors of the 
more skilled and desirable industries are closed to him. 



1 See the Sixth Schedule of the Code of Regulations for Day Schools 
(Cd. 5562. Published by His Majesty's Stationery Office). The out- 
line of the courses there given should be carefully studied by all 
interested in practical education. 



112 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Hence the Scotch Education Department in its Code 
for 1914 has offered, very \\dsely we think, an additional 
grant to schools that are able to get a fair proportion of 
the pupils in the Supplementary Courses to remain for 
three years instead of two — that is, to fifteen years 
of age instead of fourteen. It is to be hoped, in the 
interest both of the child and of society, that fifteen 
will soon become the normal minimum age for leaving 
school. 

Every year the schools of the country send out 
thousands of children of thirteen or fourteen years of 
age to join the ranks of wage-earners.^ But the duty 
of the school and of the nation does not end there. 
It is not sufficient to have given these boys and girls 
a proper training for a calling. If we stop there aU 
the thought, the skill, and the money which have been 
spent upon their education may be lost. There is no 
more critical period in the lives of children than when 
they leav^e school and have to face for the first time 
the bewildering complexity of modern industrial and 
commercial life. It is a striking fact that the 
more the economic life of a country is developed the 
greater are the risks of disaster and shipwreck to its 
youth. The difficulty of taking the right step and the 
disastrous consequences of taking the wrong one were 
never so great as they are to-day. The recent Royal 
Commission on the Poor Laws, the Reports of the Con- 
sultative Committee of the Board of Education, and 

* ^ In Edinburgh, for instance, 4500 children leave the Elementary 
Schools each year. 



PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 118 

of Commissions on Industrial Education in Canada, 
and in Massachusetts, all emphasise this. They point 
to the paramount necessity of supplying reliable in- 
formation and guidance, to those about to leave school, 
regarding the conditions of promising and permanent 
employment suited to their capabilities and bent, and 
regarding overstocked or decUning industries, and 
occupations that never lead to a man's work. 

For want of such guidance the choice of work has 
been left in the past to all sorts of chance circumstances, 
and children have been allowed simply to drift into 
employment. Evidence submitted to the Inter-De- 
partmental Committee on Physical Deterioration in 
1904 showed that about forty per cent, of the boys who 
leave school in the poorer districts of London go in this 
way into casual employment. From lack of definite 
purpose, pupils from schools all over the country are 
going into unskilled occupations, highly paid it 
may be, but teaching nothing, leading nowhere, and 
offering no hope of advancement. The increasing use 
of machinery and the growing speciaHsation of indus- 
trial work have enormously increased the demand for 
unskilled labour. Modern industry and commerce are 
riddled with blind alleys, and after years wasted in 
them, youths on the threshold of manhood find them- 
selves no nearer to permanent desirable lifework. 
Without a definite trade, and with intelligence 
undeveloped by reason of the menial and more 
or less automatic work in which they have been 
engaged, they fall in many cases into the ranks 



114 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

of the casual labourer, the unemployed, or even the 
unemployable } 

The evil results of the absence of proper training 
and guidance to children about to leave school may 
show themselves in other ways. The children may 
enter occupations for which they are not adapted, and 
in which they will never become efficient workers. 
Misfits occur in nearly every vocation, and they are a 
fruitful source of economic loss and personal suffering. 
Want of efficiency means poor workmanship, lack of 
promotion, and uncertain employment ; and those who 
find themselves in this unfortunate position often break 
down early under the strain of work for which they are 
not suited. More frequently, perhaps, they drift at 
an early stage from one position to another, and this 
means for many youths deterioration, demoralisation, 
and sooner or later unemployment. 

If we require conclusive evidence of the conse- 
quences of the unguided and aimless entrance into 

^ Mr. Meyer Bloomfield, in commenting on the evidence collected 
by the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, says : 

' Unanimous testimony on this point by the special investigators 
of the Royal Commission has led to the opinion that this perhaps is 
the most serious of all the problems encountered in its study of unemploy- 
ment. A term of sinister import has been coined to describe the products 
of this vocational anarchy — the Unemployables. 

' The unemployables are people whom no ordinary employer would 
willingly employ, not necessarily because of their physical or mental 
incapacity, but because their economic backbone has been broken. The 
wasted years have landed their innocent victims on economic quick- 
sands. Attractive wages with no training, the illegitimate use of 
youthful energy, long hours of monotonous and uneducative work, 
have produced at his majority a young man often precocious in evil 
and stunted in his vocational possibilities.' The Vocational Guidance 
of Youth, p. 19. (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 



PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 115 

work through the ever open door of unskilled and dead- 
end occupations, we have only to turn to some of the 
evidence submitted to the Royal Commission on Poor 
Laws. The startling fact is there shown that about 
twenty-eight per cent, of the unemployed are young 
people between twenty and thirty years of age. If 
we are to deal successfully with this problem of the 
unemployed, if we are to provide something more than 
palliatives for the human waste that it represents, 
the first step will be to see that every child gets a 
practical training of a definite kind before leaving 
school at fourteen, that he gets guidance and assistance 
in selecting suitable life work, and that he is not 
allowed at this stage to break off entirely his education. 
Vocational guidance, in short, is a necessary part of 
a thoroughgoing system of practical and industrial 
education. 

If from such considerations we conclude that voca- 
tional guidance is necessary, the question is. To whom 
does the duty of giving it belong ? Doubtless, it belongs 
to the parent in the first instance, and if he were always 
in a position to discharge it the matter might be left 
there. But the wise choice of an occupation is so 
important to society as well as to the individual, and 
the conditions of modern industry are so complex, 
that the parent himself generally requires information 
and assistance in the task. He cannot be expected 
to have in most instances a sufficiently intimate 
knowledge of the training, powers, limitations, and 
bent of the child, of the precise nature of the 

I 2 



116 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

work in each of the important vocations, and the pre- 
paration required for and the opportunities offered 
by it. 

There has for some time been discussion as to which 
pubhc authority should give the assistance required — 
the Board of Trade through its Labour Exchanges, or 
the Local Educational Authority. In placing children 
in suitable employment, it is certainly necessary to 
have a knowledge of the adult as well as the juvenile 
labour market, and this information the Board of 
Trade possesses. But it does not know the tempera- 
ment, capacity, and previous training of the child, 
and, as this knowledge is essential, the school appears 
to be the logical starting-point for vocational guidance. 
It seems necessary, accordingly, to extend the scope 
of the national school system to include some over- 
sight of the vocational adjustment of those it has 
trained at such expense. In Scotland this has already 
been done by the Education Act of 1908, which 
empowers School Boards to institute employment 
bureaux and, in the words of the Act, ' to combine 
with other bodies to maintain any agency for collecting 
and distributing information as to employments open 
to children on leaving school.' 

The first local authority to put this clause of the 
Act into force was the School Board of Edinburgh, 
which, after a conference with representatives of the 
Chamber of Commerce and the various trade organisa- 
tions in the city, instituted an Educational Informa- 
tion and Employment Bureau. As it was, so far as 



PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 117 

we know, the first Bureau of the kind in this country, 
it may be interesting to state its constitution and 
functions as passed by the School Board on July 20, 
1908 :— 

1. The Bureau shall be placed under the charge 
of a Standing Committee of the Board to be called 
the Educational Information and Employment Bureau 
Committee, and to consist of seven members of the 
School Board. 

2. There shall be associated with the Committee, 
an Advisory Council, consisting of the Members of 
the School Board and such representatives of public 
bodies and trade associations as the Board may from 
time to time co-opt, due regard being had to securing 
representation of the principal trades of women's 
occupations. 

3. The Advisory Council, as representing the 
various trades and occupations related to the Bureau, 
shall advise the Committee and the Director of the 
Bureau on all matters connected with the education 
required for such trades and occupations, and on 
the conditions of employment. 

4. Accommodation for the Bureau shall be found 
in the School Board Offices. 

5. The School Board shall appoint a Director 
who, subject to the Committee, shall organise and 
superintend the Bureau. Generally his duties shall 
be as follows : — 

{a) To interview boys and girls and their parents 
or guardians, and advise them with regard 
to further educational courses and most 
suitable occupations. 

(6) To prepare leaflets and pamphlets or 
tabulated matter giving information to 
the scholars about continuation work. 



118 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

(c) To keep in touch with the general require- 

ments of employers, and revise from time 
to time the statistics about employment. 

(d) To prepare and revise periodically state- 

ments of the trades and industries of 
the district, with rates of wages and 
conditions of employment. 

(e) To keep a record of vacancies intimated 
i by employers, and to arrange for suitable 

candidates having an opportunity of 
applying for such vacancies. 
(/) To report periodically on the work of the 
Bureau. 
The Director of the Bureau w^ill also act as the 
organiser for the Continuation Classes. 

Note. — As soon as the Committee and the Director 
have been appointed, notice should be sent to all 
head masters, employers, &c., explaining the purposes 
of the Bureau and the conditions for utilising its 
services. Head masters should be provided with 
printed forms to be given to the outgoing scholars, 
on which shall be entered the standard of education 
attained, habits of punctuality and attendance, and 
any general information that would be useful; and 
a duplicate shall be sent to the Bureau. The Bureau 
shall be open free of charge to parents and pupils 
wishing information as to education or employment. 

Prior to Edinburgh the city of Boston, Massa- 
chusetts, had a well-organised system of vocational 
guidance, and everyone interested in the subject 
should read the valuable little monograph, to which 
we have frequently referred, on ' The Vocational 
Guidance of Youth,' by Meyer Bloomfield, Director 
of the Vocation Bureau of Boston. 



PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 119 

In the case of smaller school boards it is not 
possible or necessary to form such a complete organisa- 
tion as exists in the cities we have mentioned. But 
in every case either the head of the school, or some 
teacher to whom he delegates the duty, should act 
as vocational adviser for that school. This teacher 
should be relieved from other duties for a certain 
length of time each week in order to have an oppor- 
tunity of interviewing pupils, conferring with parents 
and employers, and keeping records of the pupils 
who leave, and of the requirements from time to time 
of the industries in the district. 

Vocational guidance is one of the important 
phases of the modern broader conception of the scope 
and purpose of national education. It is an essential 
part of the movement to make the school a more 
effective instrument of social progress. It does not 
mean prescribing a calling, but it means organising 
all available means of information so that parents 
may know the kind of work their children leaving 
school are best fitted by nature and education to do 
well. Vocational guidance will lead to greater 
industrial efficiency, to increased welfare of the masses, 
and to the amelioration of conditions that help to 
produce the dependent and delinquent classes. More- 
over, it will help to build up the ideal of service, of 
lifework as a mission, of a calling followed by deliberate 
choice, adapted to inclination and capacity, and 
engaged in heartily and not with a feeling of drudgery. 
In addition to the direct benefits of vocational 



120 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

guidance certain valuable indirect results will follow 
from it. For one thing, it will give rise to a large 
amount of practical information regarding the 
various trades and callings, and the qualities and 
preparation required for them, that cannot fail to 
be of great service to the world. But more impor- 
tant still, the closer co-operation it involves between 
the school and the world of work ' will lead to the 
enriching of school life with vocational purpose.' 
These things will increase the demand for more and 
better continuation and trade education, and will 
give an added interest to school work which will 
have something concrete and definite in view. This 
will tend to hold the children longer at school, and 
parents will generally be willing to keep them at 
school if it is seen that doing so will be a subsequent 
advantage to the children in their life work. 

Practical education and vocational guidance in- 
volve a considerable enlargement in the responsi- 
bihty and function of the teacher. It is no longer his 
aim merely to teach according to a rigid curriculum, 
and to make the members of his class as uniform as 
possible so that they may fit into the requirements 
of school life. He has to train them for the infi- 
nitely varied demands of the world. He has to 
discover the qualities of each pupil in order that, 
in the words of Professor John Adams, ' he may 
make the best use of the educand's natural while 
at school, and may make the best recommendation 
for his life work when he leaves it. Even at the 



PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 121 

present moment, and under our rigid conditions 
as to curricula, the teacher is often applied to for 
advice regarding the best line of work for the pupil's 
future. But, in point of fact, the teacher has very 
little opportunity of learning what the pupil is fit 
for in other than scholastic subjects. Under the 
newer conditions he will become practically a speci- 
alist in diagnosing the best kind of life work for 
indi^ddual pupils. This does not mean that all 
schools are to become vocational. Indeed, this newer 
view rather marks off the teacher as essentially a 
pre-vocational trainer. He has to find out the pos- 
sibilities of the educand, and give a training that 
wiU have a bias in favour of the future life work for 
which the educand is specially fitted.' •"• 

If vocational guidance is to be worth anything, 
it must be individual in character. We must consider 
one child at a time, and this involves that there 
must be considerable reduction in the number of 
pupils generally assigned at the present time to the 
care of each teacher. 

^ The Evolution of Educational Theory ^ p. 362, 



CHAPTER XII 

FURTHER EDUCATION 

The most significant movement in the educational 
world to-day is the one concerned with the care of 
youths between fourteen and eighteen years of age 
who have left school and gone to work. It is recog- 
nised that a fundamental weakness in our present 
school system is that it allows compulsory educa- 
tion to terminate at thirteen or fourteen years of 
age. The aims of public education — a trained mind, 
a well-formed character, capacity for citizenship and 
for some work useful to the community — cannot be 
attained during the short space of eight or nine 
years of the compulsory school period. 

Not until an efficient system of continuation 
schools is organised will compulsory elementary 
education give an adequate return for the large 
expenditure it requires. Every year we spend in 
Britain £30,000,000 of public money on primary 
education, on the ground that it is necessary for 
the safety of the State and the perpetuation of 
our free institutions. A large part of this money 
is wasted if we cease to exercise any care for the 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 123 

further education and training of the child after he 
leaves the elementary school. And this is what 
we are doing at the present day in the case of 
three-fourths of the youths of the country. We are 
employing nearly the whole of the energy of our 
national education in partially training the children 
of the country, and then we allow them in large 
measure to waste. 

According to statistics collected by the Con- 
sultative Committee of the Board of Education 
in 1909, about a million and a half of boys and 
girls between fourteen and seventeen years of age 
in England and Wales receive no further educa- 
tion and preparation for their life work than that 
which the primary school has afforded them. Their 
mental development is arrested, and a large part 
of what they have previously learned in school is 
quickly forgotten. Their natures are, as yet, far from 
their full scope and development ; their characters 
and mental and physical powers are immature and 
only partially trained for the duties of life. As 
Friedrich Paulsen very well says : ' The education 
provided for our youth may be^ compa.red to an 
abandoned ruin ; the foundation is laid, a few walls 
are constructed, then the work is left to the de- 
struction of wind and water.' ^ As a nation we are 
wasting our people more than we are wasting any- 
thing else. The waste of our material resources, 

^ Quoted by Edwin G. Cooley, Proceedings for 1912 of the National 
Education, Association of theJJnitedStateSf p. 1207. 



124 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

as we have just pointed out, is a serious matter, 
but the waste of our human resources is a much 
more serious one, for no nation can prosper, as com- 
pared with other nations, except by the better 
conservation and development of the productive 
capacity of its people. 

With the increased demands on workers at the 
present day, the necessity for further education 
than the primary school can afford is becoming more 
and more urgent. The school has to do almost 
single-handed, as we have shown, what was pre- 
viously done by a number of institutions, and 
moreover it has to do it better than in any previous 
age. The demands on the adaptability, intellectual 
power, and practical capacity of the workers are 
greater now than ever they were before. Those 
whose education and training cease at fourteen years 
of age are in every danger nowadays of becoming 
failures in life, or at least of being relegated to only 
the lowest grades of work. 

The close of the primary school course is prob- 
ably the most critical period in the life of the young. 
They are approaching adolescence — the most malleable 
and formative period of their lives. New interests 
and impulses are arising within them, and their 
leaning to social and practical Ufe is increasing. 
Their characters and habits are far from formed, 
and are still plastic for good or ill. It is uncertain 
as yet whether they will become loafers and weak- 
lings in life, or interested, inteUigent, and efficient 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 125 

citizens. Everything depends upon the use made 
of the period from thirteen or fourteen to eighteen 
years of age for mental, moral, and practical training. 
Much of the training which would have been pre- 
mature before fourteen years of age, on account of 
immaturity, can be undertaken now. 

Under present arrangements in this country com- 
pulsory education ends just at the time when its con- 
tinuance is most required. This was pointed out by 
the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical 
Deterioration. In their Report they state : " Edu- 
cation in the ordinary sense of the word is over just 
when in its full significance it becomes most neces- 
sary, when parental direction is almost entirely 
absent, and in lieu of it very little supervision is 
exercised from any other quarter over physical or 
moral development.' The serious educational, moral, 
and even economic, waste resulting from this neglect 
was pointed out with great emphasis by the Con- 
sultative Committee of the Board of Education. At 
page 16 of Volume I of their exhaustive Report 
on Continuation Schools they state : ' The Committee 
find that at the most critical period in their lives a 
very large majority of the boys and girls in England 
and Wales are left without any sufficient guidance 
and care. This neglect results in great waste of early 
promise, in injury to character, in the lessening of 
industrial efficiency, and in the lowering of ideals of 
personal and civic duty.' 

We may say, then, that on all hands there is 



126 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

now a consensus of opinion that the most pressing 
educational problem at the present time is the edu- 
cation of adolescents. The difficulty is to decide what 
practical steps should be taken in dealing with it. 
Generally speaking, one or other of two courses 
might be followed. We might extend the period of 
compulsory schooling for two or three years beyond 
the present limit, or we might build upon the ele- 
mentary school a complete system of part-time 
continuation classes carrying forward the general 
and practical education of those who must leave 
school at fourteen, and making it more helpful for 
the successful discharge of their various duties in 
life. This would really be a form of secondary 
education for the masses of the people. 

The first would doubtless be the ideal solution, 
but it must, we fear, be dismissed as impracticable 
at the present time. The burden upon working- 
class parents would be increased beyond what they 
could bear without substantial State assistance. 
Also, the difficulty of making the change from school 
environment to life conditions would be greater even 
than now. Moreover, psychological investigation has 
shown that the great majority of boys and girls at 
fourteen years of age, in all grades of society, are 
ready for vocational training provided it is accom- 
panied by suitable forms of education. But the 
first, the financial difficulty, is the only serious one, 
and if it were overcome the others could be 
arranged. 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 127 

The second course — namely, the development 
of a system of continuation education — is the more 
practicable plan, and it is the one that has been 
applied in Scotland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, 
and Switzerland. Germany has organised her con- 
tinuation schools more completely and successfully 
than any other country in the world. Her reply to 
the problems raised by the industrial revolution 
was the development of her continuation and trade 
schools. Her reward has been a marked increase 
in the productive power and material prosperity of 
her people, and an unprecedented development of her 
trade and industries. 

When evening continuation schools were started 
in this country they limited their scope almost en- 
tirely to instruction in English, arithmetic, and 
other school studies, their aim indeed being simply 
to continue the education of the elementary schools. 
The studies were abstract and bookish, no attention 
was paid to the trades of the pupils, and there was 
no bond of union between the schools and the work- 
shops. It is no wonder that with these imperfections 
the evening schools of twenty or thirty years ago 
were attended by only a small number of the youths 
of the working classes. Experience, particularly that 
of the German people, has shown that we should 
relinquish the old traditions out of which the evening 
schools arose as places for the repetition of elementary 
school work, and develop continuation education 
as an independent school system requiring the same 



128 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

liberal financial support, and the same care in organ- 
isation and staffing as the primary schools. 

If continuation education would succeed it must get 
away from studies which are solely ' cultural,' and 
place the emphasis on the forms of training which have 
to do with mastery of some definite activity, career, or 
vocation. General education, especially instruction 
in literature, should always be given, but it should 
be closely related to the practical studies. The one 
should reinforce and give content to the other. The 
drawing, mathematics, science, and other subjects 
should be taught practically, and in such a way as 
to supply the deficiencies in the workshops' training, 
and to enlist the interest of the pupils. 

Continuation teaching should never be a generaUsed 
affair, but a definite attempt to supplement and round 
out the training in some occupation in accordance 
with the needs of advanced modern industrial practice. 
This necessitates that, wherever possible, separate 
classes should be formed for the various trades and 
occupations in the district — including domestic work 
and agriculture — for in this way only is it possible 
to adapt the course of training to the needs of the 
individual pupils. 

But even under the most favourable circumstances, 
the continuation school can never give a complete 
trade training ; that must be obtained in the actual 
pursuit of the caUing. The aims in view in con- 
tinuation education are rather to emphasise those 
parts of the training which the industry itself is least 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 129 

able to give, to keep pace with the period of apprentice- 
ship, making it thorough and many-sided, and especi- 
ally to counteract the narrowing effect and poverty of 
ideas which result from the extreme specialisation 
of modern industry. The worker is no longer a crafts- 
man in the old sense of the word — a master of all 
the processes involved in the production of the finished 
work. Hence he requires instruction in general 
principles, and a knowledge of the materials employed, 
and of the various processes and successive stages 
in the manufacture and distribution of the articles 
produced. The aim throughout is to cultivate simul- 
taneously knowledge and skill, and to develop the 
industrial intelligence, originality, and adaptability 
of the pupil. ^ 

The continuation pupil is at a stage at which we 
must train him to be not only a good workman but 
a good and loyal citizen, able to play worthily his 
part as a member of society and of the State. An 
essential part of continuation education therefore 
is civic instruction. A suitable starting-point is 
the pupil's trade or occupation. The more we are 
able to base civic instruction on personal experience 
the more successful it will be. The history of his 
trade, the course of its development, and its position 

^ The whole subject is dealt with in a complete manner in the Report 
of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Attendance 
at Continuation Schools, and in the volume on Continuation Schools in 
England and Elsewhere, by Michael E. Sadler. One of the most 
suggestive documents dealing with continuation education is the Scotch 
Education Department's Code of Regulations for Continuation Classes. 



130 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

in the industries of his own country and of the world 
should be discussed. He should learn something of 
the efforts and struggles of workers in other indus- 
tries, and of the interdependence of interests of all 
members of the community. By these means he 
should be led, before he reaches his political majority, 
to recognise his duty towards his fellow workmen 
and his employer, and his family and social duties. 
He should learn how the present-day problems of 
his town and the nation arose ; and the outcome 
of it all should be a clear recognition of his responsi- 
bilities, duties, and rights as an individual in the 
State. 

But it is not only the intelligence, character, and 
practical powers of the pupil that are still largely 
untrained when he leaves the elementary school. His 
physical powers also are undeveloped. Hence suitable 
forms of physical training and games, and instruction 
in the laws of health (including first-aid help) should 
take a prominent place in all continuation school work. 

There should always be a true bond of union 
between the continuation school and the workshop. 
There should be co-operation between those w^ho 
regard continuation teaching from the educational 
side and those who, through practical experience, 
regard it rather from the economic and industrial 
side. The many problems involved in continuation 
education are not solely pedagogic, and unless we 
bring to bear upon them the best opinion of the great 
employing class and of the great class of skilled 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 131 

employees they cannot receive their best solution. 
Hence while continuation schools, as an integral part 
of our educational system, should be conducted by the 
public and at the public expense, the curricula and 
other practical details of the school work should be 
submitted to consultative and advisory bodies consist- 
ing of representatives of employers and employees in 
the industries of the district, as well as of the teachers 
and the local educational authorities. 

This is the plan that has been adopted in London, 
Edinburgh, Munich, and some other cities, and it is to 
this effective co-operation that the marked success of the 
Continuation School system in these centres is in large 
measure due. In Edinburgh, for example, the School 
Board has instituted about twenty Advisory Committees, 
one for each group of industries in the district, such as 
printing, engineering, building construction, &c. Each 
Committee visits once a year the appropriate groups 
of classes, and also helps in planning suitable courses 
of instruction, and in deUmiting the spheres of action 
of the school and the workshop. 

It deserves consideration whether, in the towns 
in which these Committees have been formed, public 
opinion is not ripe enough to extend their scope by 
utilising them, along with the employment bureaux 
recommended in the preceding chapter, to furnish 
information regarding the conditions and prospects of 
the various industries, and to help pupils to find 
situations for which they are suited. In this way the 
Committees would probably help to prevent the 

K 2 



132 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

hardship and industrial waste arising from the over- 
crowding of some trades and the scarcity of workers 
in others. 

A difficulty in connection with continuation schools 
is the supply of teachers. At present these schools 
in this country are staffed mainly by primary school 
teachers, with a certain amount of assistance from 
skilled artisans and talented business men and women. 
This is probably the best arrangement that can be 
made so long as the classes only meet for an hour or 
two in the evening on two or three nights a week. 
The ordinary school teachers employed, however, 
should be selected because of their fitness to teach 
adolescents on a practical basis ; and, to do full justice 
to themselves and to their work, they should be 
allowed a corresponding amount of relief from their 
day-school teaching. 

Expert artisan teachers have many advantages. 
They bring the air of the occupation into the 
school, the processes they teach are the actual 
processes of the up-to-date workshop, and they 
illuminate their teaching by reference to practical 
details. If practical experts of this kind are employed, 
it is highly desirable that they should be given, 
through co-operation with the local authority for 
training teachers, instruction in educational methods, 
aad at least a short course of supervised practice in 
teaching.^ The tendency, however, is to make con- 

* Every new untrained teacher employed in Continuation Classes 
in Edinburgh is required to take, under the Edinburgh Provincial 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 138 

tinuation school teaching a separate career, demanding 
special preparation and training. This is very marked 
in Prussia and other parts of Germany, and the practice 
will spread rapidly in this country as more and more 
of the classes meet in the daytime. 

Committee for the Training of Teachers, a course of training which 
includes : — 

1. Six lectures on General Methods in Teaching. 

2. Four Demonstration Lessons with discussion of the methods 
employed. 

3. Ten hours of supervised practice in teaching Continuation Classes. 

4. Regular visits during ordinary classwork from the Master of 
Method. 

5. Specially arranged visits of the Master of Method accompanied 
by an expert who has proved himself a competent teacher in the relative 
subject. 

This enlightened policy of the Edinburgh School Board has had a 
most gratifying effect on the teaching in the continuation classes. 



CHAPTER XIII 

FURTHER EDUCATION (CONTINUED) 

The conviction is rapidly growing that voluntary- 
attendance at continuation schools meeting chiefly 
in the evening no longer suffices for the educational 
requirements of modern States. Every year we are 
getting a clearer perception of the nature and extent 
of the mischief that is being wrought by the present 
system of laissez faire. A large proportion of the 
adolescent boys and girls throughout the country 
will never be touched by a voluntary system, and 
these are the very ones who need the education most. 
Keen and capable youths attend, but the reckless and 
unskilled never go, and the unemployable, the hooligan, 
and the apache are the outcome. 

In some manufacturing cities in England the 
number of possible pupils attending continuation 
classes is as low as 1 in 25, and in even the more 
progressive educationally it is only about 1 in 7. 
No city in the country has been more successful 
with its voluntary continuation schools than Edin- 
burgh, and even there out of about 17,000 youths 
between fourteen and seventeen years of age 5500 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 135 

are receiving no form of education, and probably 
never can be reached by voluntary methods. In face 
of these figures, and many others that could be quoted, 
those interested in the educational welfare of the 
country see that some system of compulsion is necessary. 
This involves no new principle. The State which 
claims control over the child up to thirteen or four- 
teen years of age cannot stop there. It must recognise 
its duty to guard from waste for some years longer 
what it has been at such trouble and expense to train. 

There are, we know, many difficulties in the 
way of compulsory continuation education — some 
educational and administrative, others economic. 
We have yet to learn much regarding the char- 
acter of the instruction most suitable for many 
industries. If we make attendance at continua- 
tion classes obligatory on all children leaving the 
elementary school, we shall have to reconsider the 
whole question of staffing and accommodation. Re- 
forms will be necessary in the conditions of employ- 
ment during adolescence, for it would be cruel to 
force youths tired after their day's work to attend 
schools in the evening. Various economic problems 
will be raised by the partial withdrawal of this large 
body of juvenile work from the labour market. 

But, above all, the movement for continuation 
education is retarded by the absence of a strong 
public opinion in favour of compulsion. Only the 
few who have studied the matter are definitely in 
favour of change, the many are apathetic or even 



136 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

antagonistic. They are not convinced that the cost 
involved to the ratepayers, and the sacrifice to the 
parents, the youths, and their employers, would 
be a good investment. They point to what they 
consider the doubtful returns from our compulsory 
primary education, without seeing that it is to 
a large extent the incompleteness of that system 
which leads to the waste of public money and to 
the unconvincing results. 

In this state of public opinion everything possible 
should be done to arouse public interest in continuation 
classes, and to spread information regarding them. We 
can help meanwhile to popularise the classes by suiting 
the instruction and the times of meeting to the needs, 
and even the convenience, of the young people, and 
of the employers in the various industries in the 
district. Day-school teachers can help by advising 
all pupils who are leaving them to enrol in continu- 
ation classes. Much useful propaganda work can 
be done, by means of meetings and distribution of 
circulars, to point out the nature and value of the 
work done in continuation classes. The Consultative 
and Advisory Committees we have referred to can do 
much to help on the Continuation Class movement. 

But while doing everything possible to meet 
reasonable difficulties and to educate public opinion, 
it should be realised that we cannot continue in these 
days of keen international rivalry to dally with the 
problem of compulsory continuation education. It 
is a matter of national safety to settle it without 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 137 

much further delay. On the way to a universal 
compulsory system there is the system of local 
option. Statutory power might be given to the Local 
Educational Authorities to make by-laws for com- 
pelling attendance at continuation classes up to 
an age fixed by the by-laws. This is the method 
that has proved so successful in Germany, and 
has been in operation in Scotland since 1908. Since 
the foundation of the Germanic Empire the different 
States composing it have had the power to make 
attendance at continuation schools compulsory, and 
to require employers to grant the necessary time. 
In twelve of the States every apprentice has to 
attend a continuation school for from six to eleven 
hours a week during the whole period of his appren- 
ticeship, or until the completion of his eighteenth 
year, and his certificate as a journeyman is only 
granted if he has satisfied the necessary educational 
tests. In ten of the States there is ' local option ' 
regarding continuation school attendance, and in 
only four States is attendance voluntary. 

Section 10 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908, 
requires every School Board to make provision for 
continuation classes with reference to the crafts 
and industries — including agriculture and domestic 
arts — practised in the district. The same section 
also gives each School Board power to make by- 
laws, if they so decide, compelling the attendance at 
these classes of such young persons between fourteen 
and seventeen years of age as are not otherwise 



138 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

receiving suitable education. A penalty is imposed 
upon anyone who employs a young person at times 
when he or she is required by the local by-law to 
attend the continuation class, or employs him or 
her for such a length of time as exceeds in any one 
day or week the period of employment permitted 
for the young person by any Act of Parliament. 

Sufficient time has not elapsed to enable a final 
opinion to be formed of the Scottish system. As 
yet only eighteen School Boards out of about nine 
hundred have adopted it, but it should be added 
that the largest School Board in Scotland (Glasgow) 
is one of the eighteen. Complaints are already 
being made that districts, which have been enter- 
prising enough to make attendance compulsory, are 
being placed at an apparent disadvantage as com- 
pared with their industrial rivals in adjoining dis- 
tricts that have not adopted the compulsory system. 
This may be a shortsighted view, but there is no 
doubt that less temporary inconvenience and dis- 
location of industry would be caused were the com- 
pulsory system universal. Doubtless after a time 
employers will see that attendance at continuation 
classes increases the value of the services of their 
workers. Should the local option plan fail, local 
authorities will be able to make with more con- 
fidence an appeal to Parliament to make obligatory 
attendance at continuation schools universal. 

The general adoption of the compulsory method 
would be a reform of great magnitude and of far- 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 189 

reaching consequences, not only to the young people 
concerned but to the country at large. The increased 
productive power and the physical well-being of the 
people would, within a generation, be out of all pro- 
portion to the increased cost to the nation. As 
Thorndike very well says, ' The community that insists 
on protecting the young against being used up in helping 
the community to get a living, soon finds itself getting a 
better living, and other things of much more worth.' ^ 

There is at the present time a great waste of 
teaching power, and consequently financial waste, 
in connection with continuation education, because 
the instruction is given almost entirely in the evenings, 
when neither the pupils nor the teachers are capable 
of their best work. Only pupils of more than average 
physical and intellectual strength are able to undergo 
such a strain without injury at this critical period 
in their growth. Everyone who has considered the 
question agrees that along with compulsion should go 
a reasonable part-time system of work at occupations 
and part-time attendance at day continuation classes.^ 

1 Education, by E. L. Thorndike, p. 238. (Macmillan.) 
^ Scotland already has the nucleus of a Day Continuation School 
System in the Supplementary Classes referred to on p. 111. The Supple- 
mentary Schools in Edinburgh, for example, have accommodation 
suitable for the practical instruction of apprentices in twenty trades. 
In Germany evening classes are being gradually dropped, and in 
some cities by-laws have been passed forbidding them for youths under 
eighteen. J. E. G. de Montmorency in The Schools of the Nation, p. 40, 
says : ' It may be a heresy, but for my part I am inclined to believe 
that in a really perfectly organised scheme of national education there 
should be no evening schools, though there should be every facility for 
study in the provision of lectures, reading rooms, and technical lending 
libraries.' 



140 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

The chief obstacle to this reform in the past has 
been the fear that it might interfere unduly with the 
exigencies of trade and commerce. Experience has 
shown that the fear is to a large extent groundless. 
Many public-spirited and enlightened employers of 
labour in the chief manufacturing centres throughout 
the country — in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, 
Manchester, York, Sheffield, Bradford, Leicester, 
&c. — have voluntarily sent their young employees 
to day classes. Almost without exception they have 
come to the conclusion that they get work better in 
quality and relatively greater in quantity, and they 
have given effect to this view by the payment in 
many instances of the class fees and full wages. 

In arranging the times of the day classes for a 
certain trade every consideration should be given 
by the educational authorities to the convenience 
of the employers in that industry, and if the industry 
has a periodically recurring dull season the instruction 
might be given chiefly during that time. 

Compulsory day continuation classes should play 
an important part in solving the apprenticeship 
problem. In the days of small workshops the master 
gave his apprentice an all-round knowledge of his 
trade, and at the same time trained his mind and 
character. Modern conditions of industry render 
that impossible. The educational opportunities of 
the factory and workshop nowadays are almost nil, 
and the system of apprenticeship will break down 
utterly unless it is reconstructed on a broader basis. 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 141 

The young worker must get in future a large part of his 
training elsewhere than in the workshops, and for 
this purpose the continuation school will be indis- 
pensable. By dovetailing suitable continuation educa- 
tion and training into workshop practice, it will be 
possible to produce workers endowed with the practical 
skill and the alertness and adaptability of mind 
necessary to meet successfully the demands of the 
new industrial conditions. 

In some cases the day continuation schools 
have developed into trade schools, in the restricted 
sense of that term — namely, schools in which young 
persons are taught from the foundation all the de- 
partments of work in a certain trade or skilled occupa- 
tion, including the use of all the hand and machine 
tools required for the processes involved. In these 
schools the whole or a portion of the apprenticeship 
is passed. The class rooms are like workshops, and 
the work is carried on in a manner as nearly as possible 
similar to actual shop conditions. The greatest 
development of trade education has taken place 
in France, Switzerland, and Germany. In Munich 
alone, under the leadership of Dr. Kerschensteiner, 
there are complete courses for sixty-seven trades, 
and in Berlin for over two hundred and twenty. 
Such schools are still in an experimental stage in this 
country. In Scotland they are practically non- 
existent. In England there are about thirty, and 
in Ireland about a dozen. 

But it is doubtful if trade schools, in the strict 



142 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

sense, will ever be numerous on account of the 
great diversity of trades, the almost infinite speci- 
alisation of modern industry, and the large cost 
of equipment, materials, maintenance, and instruc- 
tion in them, in proportion to the number of 
students who can be instructed. Moreover, it is 
very questionable whether the trade school can 
ever be made a complete substitute for apprentice- 
ship. It is impossible for the school to reproduce 
the conditions and the experience of the workshop 
or the office. These and other difficulties will always 
limit the development of trade schools for all except 
a few special crafts and industries. For all other 
cases a well-developed Day Continuation School 
System for the various trades, with a thorough mutual 
understanding as to the part of the training to be 
done by the school and workshop respectively, should 
meet all the educational and economic wants of the 
country. 

Although we have been advocating so far the neces- 
sity of adequate facilities in continuation schools for 
the education of youths up to seventeen or eighteen 
years of age, yet we are of opinion that there should 
be no upper age limit in our continuation school 
system. It must provide for adults as well as adoles- 
cents, for those of all ages who, through ambition 
or love of learning, desire to drink more deeply at 
the wells of knowledge. Education should not cease 
when we begin to be men and women. Hence in 
connection with our continuation school system 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 143 

there should be voluntary evening classes for those 
who desire to continue their general or practical 
education by studying after their day's work. These 
classes would provide purely advanced and exten- 
sion teaching, regardless of the requirements of the 
too definitely prescribed schemes of study by which 
so many parts of our educational system are need- 
lessly bound and enshrouded. 

We have been dealing as yet with the practical 
education of the skilled artisan and the rank and file 
of industrial workers. It is at least equally essen- 
tial for our national well-being to train experts in 
the various fields of industry and commerce, and 
to carry on the scientific education of youths of 
promise in the hope that they may become leaders 
in their respective fields. For social progress we 
need, as John Stuart Mill said, ' a perpetual succes- 
sion of superior minds by whom knowledge is 
advanced, and the community urged forward in 
civiHsation.' ^ 

Hence at the apex of our national system of 
practical education we require technical colleges, 
colleges of arts and crafts, colleges of domestic 
science, and colleges of agriculture — all closely co- 
ordinated with the continuation schools, and giving 
the highest instruction in the technique and scientific 
methods of the industries in the communities in 
which they are situated. One of the oldest technical 
colleges in Europe is the School for Watchmaking 

* Principles of Political Economy, Bk. V, chap, xi, §8. 



144 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

in Geneva, and we know that to-day the Swiss are 
the most perfect watchmakers in the world. Ger- 
many has six or seven thousand college- trained 
chemists in her industries, and until the recent war 
she led the world in chemical dyes, pigments for 
artists, and coloured inks for printing processes. 

In order to build up new industries or to revive old 
ones, continental nations institute technical schools 
for the industries. In this country we have not 
done so. Our technical colleges, which are to all 
intents and purposes our artisan universities, have 
suffered generally from insufficient nutrition — 
material and personal. They have been hampered 
through lack of financial support and lack of suitable 
pupils, especially day pupils, from local industries. 
The vast majority, indeed, of employers have been 
totally indifferent to them. 

We must encourage, too, a thoroughgoing 
system of industrial research in the laboratories 
of our technical colleges and universities. As 
Mr. J. A. Pease, President of the Board of Educa- 
tion, said in the House of Commons in May 1915, 
' We must bring our universities and technical 
institutions into closer connection with industry, 
and also our leaders of industry into closer connec- 
tion with skilled workers.' Action, he said, should 
be taken at once for this purpose, and he recom- 
mended the appointment of an Advisory Council 
on Industrial Research, consisting of scientific experts 
along with leaders of industry. 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 145 

Many movements have been set on foot from 
time to time to bring higher liberal education within 
the reach of the working classes. The University 
Extension Movement had this object in view, but 
it has proved a comparative failure because it was 
imposed upon workpeople by the Universities from 
above, instead of being organised and managed by 
the workers themselves. This fundamental error 
has been remedied in the Tutorial Classes promoted 
by the Workers' Educational Association. The aim 
of this Association is to interest the workers in higher 
education by supplying information regarding facili- 
ties for such education, and by providing facilities 
when they do not exist. The most important work 
done by the Association in this direction is the in- 
stitution of University Tutorial Classes.^ The idea 
of the movement is not to give advanced instruction 
of a kind directly useful in the vocations, but to 
provide university education to workers who remain 
workers all their lives. The aim is intellectual 
and spiritual energy, not material success, not to 
enable workers to become something else than what 
they are. 

The movement has spread with extraordinary 
rapidity. During the session 1913-14, for instance, 
thirteen Universities in England and Wales conducted 
in all 142 classes, which were attended by over 3500 
students drawn from almost every occupation, but 

1 See University Tutorial Classes, by A. Mansbridge. (Longmans, 
Green, and Co.) 



146 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

mostly manual workers. No University has done more 
to further the movement than Oxford University. 
The University Tutorial Classes are managed by Joint 
Committees consisting of equal numbers of University 
representatives and of representatives of the Workers' 
Educational Association. In every case the tutors are 
appointed by the Universities, and they are always 
persons of high university standing. 

The subjects studied are chosen by the class in con- 
sultation with the tutor, and they generally have a more 
or less direct bearing upon the great problems of life. 
Courses have been selected in this way from the follow- 
ing : Economics, Economic History, Literature, General 
History, Political Science, Philosophy, Psychology, 
and Biology. No class is allowed to exceed thirty 
in number, and each member must agree to attend 
regularly once a week for twenty-four weeks during 
each of three successive winters, and to undertake 
to be regular in writing essays bearing upon the subject 
of the course. Each meeting of a class lasts for two 
hours, the first of which is devoted normally to a 
lecture, and the second to questions and discussion 
by the students. A high standard of work is generally 
reached, and we are informed on the authority of the 
English Board of Education that in the classes ' there 
are students whose essays compare favourably with 
the best academic work.' 

The work done by the Tutorial Classes shows that 
the higher education of the manual workers is no 
impracticable chimera. The Classes are spreading 



CONTINUATION EDUCATION 147 

the love of pure learning among the working people, 
are bringing within their reach many of the best 
advantages of university education, and are thus 
enabling them to perform more worthily their part 
as members of the family, society, and state. 



L *> 



CHAPTER XIV 

CHILDREN UNDER SCHOOL AGE 

By the passing of the Education Act of 1870 children 
over five years of age were practically compelled to 
attend school, but school attendance under this age 
was encouraged by the payment of liberal grants — 
six shillings for each child under four, and eight 
shillings for each one over that age. The result was 
that when the next great Education Act was passed 
— that of 1902 — there were in the public elementary 
schools of England and Wales nearly six hundred 
thousand children between three and five (or about 
a third of all the children of that age in the country) 
and two or three thousand even under three years 
of age. According to the official view as expressed 
in the Reports of School Inspectors, these children 
were from the first to be ' instructed suitably to their 
age,' for, even at the best, their school-life would be 
so short, and they would so soon have to enter the 
labour market, that ' it could not be considered wise 
to postpone reading, writing, and simple arithmetic 
too late.' 

But gradually doubts arose in the public mind as 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 149 

to the wisdom of submitting children under five to 
school instruction, or indeed of having them in the 
ordinary elementary school at all. The matter was 
investigated by the Board of Education first by five 
of its Women Inspectors, and afterwards by its Con- 
sultative Committee.^ The Reports of these experts, 
pubhshed in 1905 and 1908 respectively, came to 
practically the same conclusions — that the formal 
education of a child should not be seriously com- 
menced before the age of six or seven, that in dealing 
with babies under five there should be no hard-and- 
fast time-table or curriculum, that set lessons in 
reading, writing, and arithmetic should not be given, 
that there should be ample facilities for play and 
games and easy access to the school garden or play- 
ground, and that suitable provision should be made 
for the children sleeping when tired. 

A good home is, on social, hygienic, and educational 
grounds, the best school for a child until he is five 
years of age.^ But unfortunately many homes have 
not the necessary means or accommodation for the 
nurture and training of young children, and if the 
children are left entirely to the care of the home they 
may in many cases, as we have shown in previous 
chapters, be handicapped for life physically, mentally, 

^ The Report of the Consultative Committee upon the School Attendance 
of Children below the Age of Five (Cd. 4259. Published by His 
Majesty's Stationery Office) should be read, as it contains a full and 
adequate statement of all aspects of tbe subject. 

* Since 1905 the Board of Education has made it optional to Local 
Educational Authorities to refuse admission to their schools of children 
under five years of age. 



150 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

and even morally, before they reach ordinary school 
age. Or the mothers may have to be absent from 
home during the day to go to work, and may have 
to leave their children, for whom they are toiling, 
untended either indoors or in the streets. 

Such cases cannot under any social arrangements 
be entirely avoided, and it seems but fair to the 
children themselves, and to the interests of the com- 
munity at large, that some public provision should 
be made for their care and training. If wisely done 
this will strengthen, not weaken, the influence of home 
life. If the children are given a better chance now 
of growing up to be useful citizens, this will lead in 
course of time to a steady diminution in the number 
of homes in which children cannot enjoy the inestim- 
able blessing of proper parental training, and will be 
a powerful means of improving our imperfect social 
conditions. We must always keep in mind that our 
ultimate aim is to make all homes such as to be able 
to discharge satisfactorily their natural duty of foster- 
ing, at every stage, the development of the children in 
them. 

Let us consider at the outset the provision made 
at the present time for children whose upbringing is 
neglected from any of the causes we have mentioned ; 
we shall then be in a better position to decide whether 
it is advisable or necessary to improve or supplement 
the present arrangements. 

Among the manifestations of the quickened social 
conscience of the present day are the many efforts made 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 151 

for the care of children under compulsory school age in 
the poor districts of our large towns. The means taken 
for their care are mainly of three kinds — day nurseries 
or creches, kindergartens, and babies' classes in the 
public elementary schools. 

Day nurseries originated in France about seventy 
years ago, and in 1913 there were no fewer than 110 
of them in Paris and its suburbs, and over 320 in other 
parts of the country. From there they have spread 
into Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. They have 
never secured a very firm footing here, and at the 
present time there are only about eighty day nurseries 
in this country, the great majority — fifty-five — being 
in London. In Edinburgh there are four, supported 
by voluntary subscriptions and managed by a number 
of medical doctors and other citizens who have formed 
themselves into the Edinburgh Day Nurseries Associ- 
ation. The routine of day nurseries is somewhat 
as follows : They are open daily (except Sunday) 
from about 6.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. They receive 
children from two or three weeks to five years old, and 
a charge of about Sd. or 4c?. per day is generally 
made for each child. The children are washed when 
admitted in the morning and dressed in the nursery 
clothes for the day. A doctor visits the day nursery 
frequently, and everything possible is done by attention 
to cleanliness, feeding, rest, and play to secure the 
development of the children. 

Next come kindergartens for children from three 
to five years of age. They are as a rule conducted in 



152 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

this country by private persons or societies. They 
not only take care for several hours a day of children 
from necessitous homes, or children whose mothers 
are at work, but they also attend to the cleanliness 
of the children, to their physical growth by means of a 
midday meal followed by sleep, and to their moral 
and mental education through occupations, games, and 
plays, more or less in accordance with Froebel's prin- 
ciples. The chief objects and aims to be kept in view 
in work of this kind in a slum district have been stated 
to be : — 

1. To see that the children are clean and adequately 

fed, and to train them in habits of cleanliness. 

2. To occupy them indoors and out of doors in 

a manner suited to their childish years, thus 
adding to their happiness, intelligence, and use- 
fulness during childhood and in after-life. 

3. To aid the progress of morality, order, and 

freedom through the general influence of the 
kindergarten. 

4. To obtain the goodwill and co-operation of the 

parents, to acquaint them with the laws of 
human growth and development, and to help 
them to realise and fulfil their responsibilities 
with regard to their children. 

The former and present students of the Edinburgh 
Provincial College for the Training of Teachers support 
a College Mission in the form of a free kindergarten 
in a poor district in the neighbourhood of the College. 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 153 

Miss Ethel Marriott, who was in charge of the kinder- 
garten during the first two and a half years of its 
existence, has given the following outline of the daily 
routine, which may be taken as more or less typical 
of that in other institutions of the kind : — 

' The children arrive, often escorted by an 
elder brother or sister, at or soon after 9.15 a.m. 
Each is armed with a small lunch " piece " with 
his name written on the wrapper, and on Monday 
mornings brings his overall, towel, and pillow-case 
washed by the mother at the week-end. After 
putting away their " pieces " in a basket, the 
children hang up their outdoor things on pegs 
easily recognisable to them by a special brightly 
coloured picture, and put on overalls. 

' Brushing of teeth comes next on the pro- 
gramme ; and then the children go into the 
schoolroom where each is given a "job" — that 
is, a piece of work for which he is responsible 
and which is done not for himself alone but 
for the welfare of all. There is much to be 
done to make the " wee schule " as bright and 
beautiful as possible. There are flowers to 
arrange, pets to be cared for, brasses to be 
polished, the piano to be dusted, milk to fetch. 
The children have a high standard. " I like 
to see the pinanny [piano] real clean " said 
one mite of four as she rubbed away at the keys 
with her red duster. Left to themselves the 



154 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

children arrange flowers beautifully, and take 
a great pride and joy in their work. Then 
follow morning song and the register, and 
then any pennies brought are put into the chil- 
dren's contribution box — a much beloved china 
cat. Many halfpennies which would otherwise 
be spent at the " sweety shop " are brought to 
*' Pussy " instead, and then comes in due 
time the delight of spending the savings at 
the toyshop. 

' After some vigorous marching, running, 
drilling, the children settle down to an occupa- 
tion. These occupations are usually centred 
round some natural object of which the children 
have already some experience. For instance, 
if " horse " is the centre chosen, the children 
go out to see the horses working on the roads ; 
they visit a stable ; and watch the neighbouring 
blacksmith shoeing a horse. And then after 
these experiences, in simple materials such as 
bricks, sand, clay, &c., and through stories, 
songs, and games, they represent their ideas, 
and so deepen the impressions gained. 

' At 10.30 A.M. two monitors (children) set 
the lunch tables, and we all sit down together 
to a meal of milk and bread. A special point 
is made of this, because, unless on Sundays at 
dinner-time, these children never sit down to 
a family meal. Too often at home they are 
given a " piece " and ordered out of doors. 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 155 

While the monitors clear away and wash up 
the mugs and plates, the others have games 
or free play with toys, in the garden whenever 
possible. Unconsciously, in all this work, the 
children are forming habits of orderliness ; and 
in w^orking together and in the sharing of toys, 
&c., are learning something of the joy and 
responsibilities of citizenship. 

' At noon they go home, returning again 
at 1.15 P.M., when boots are taken off, and the 
children go to bed and sleep for an hour. The 
beds are specially made of strong netting stretched 
across wooden frames which fold up to be put 
away, and can be easily disinfected. There 
is no doubt of the benefit of the afternoon sleep 
to the children who, in their overcrowded homes, 
are generally put late to bed, and even then do 
not sleep under really hygienic conditions. In 
time, the mothers come to realise the importance 
of this midday rest. 

' We encourage mothers to come about the 
kindergarten to watch the children at work 
and play, to come to evening meetings when 
they take turns in helping with the teas, to 
send small contributions, and to help with 
sewing and washing. Gradually as the aims 
of the kindergarten come to be realised, the 
mothers make greater efforts for the children, 
and marked improvement in cleanliness, regularity, 
and punctuality is the result.' 



156 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Experience has shown that the kindergarten is one 
of the most successful educational agencies for reaching 
the home and uplifting its ideals. It tends to make 
the parents take a keener interest in the care and 
development of their children. It gives the chil- 
dren a chance of becoming robust and vigorous in 
body and mind, and of becoming in due time useful 
citizens. The free kindergartens in the slums 
have done good by the emphasis they lay on the 
humanising, socialising, and nurturing element in 
education. They have pointed the way in which 
the community's efforts may best be directed to 
save the child of the slums from almost inevitable 
social failure ; and they have been the starting-point 
of other philanthropic endeavours to deal effectively 
with the problems of the slums through playgrounds, 
social settlements, visiting nurses, &c. 

As kindergartens have been founded chiefly by 
private societies, there are no general statistics to be 
had as to the total number of poor children provided 
for in this way in Britain as a whole, but they form 
a very smaU fraction indeed of those who stand 
in sore need of such aid. In London there are only 
seven or eight kindergartens. In Scotland there are 
in aU at present seven — five in Edinburgh, one in 
Glasgow, and one in Dundee. It must be remembered, 
too, that, to do its work effectively, and to retain its 
family-like influence, a kindergarten can accommodate 
only about twenty children. 

In many of the public elementary schools in England 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 157 

and Wales there are babies' classes formed for children 
between three and five years of age, and government 
grants are paid for them. In Scotland, on the other 
hand, there are hardly any children under five in the 
elementary schools — probably because of the com- 
paratively small number of women who go out to 
work there, and of the higher standard of home life 
resulting from this. But even there it is felt that more 
should be done for the children under compulsory 
school age, especially in the poorer quarters of the 
large towns. 

In the best schools babies' classes are not put under 
the same discipline and formal instruction in the three 
R's as the older pupils, and the work done contains 
many of the good features of the kindergarten. There 
can be no doubt of the value of these classes to babies 
who otherwise would be left day by day mainly to the 
influences and hardships of the street. But the classes 
are not generally as clear in their educational aim as 
the kindergarten, their furniture is not so suitable, 
nor do they have, Hke it, accommodation for sleeping 
when the babies are tired. The playground, too, of 
the babies' class is in nearly every case the same as 
that of the older pupils, and there is no garden with 
flower plots and sand heaps and playing spaces in 
which the babies may work and play and sleep in the 
open air on most days of the year. In short, the 
babies' room of the elementary school tends to be too 
much of a school and too fittle of a nursery to meet the 
needs of the neglected slum child. 



158 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

But all these attempts, creditable though they be, 
to deal with the child problem are insufficient to prevent 
the lamentable waste of child life and child character 
going on throughout the country. We are threatened 
in many districts with a stationary or even a decreasing 
population, and yet we are squandering the life of the 
young at a rate that is alarming. According to figures 
given in the Report of the Consultative Committee 
upon the School Attendance of Children below the Age 
of Five, the number of deaths per thousand during 
the decade 1891-1900 was :— 





Scotland 


England 
and Wales 


Under 1 year . 


127-9 


153-3 


1-2 years 


43-6 


42-4 


2-3 „ 


17-6 


16-0 


3-4 „ 


10-4 


10-1 


4-5 „ 


7-3 


7-2 



Much of this is due to the poverty or ignorance or 
neglect of parents. There are countless families in 
which the offspring have to grow up amid extreme 
poverty, often cold and hungry and poorly clad, or 
amid squalor, dirt, and other conditions in which 
there can be no health of body or of soul. They are 
disinherited beings from the beginning. They are 
damaged for life during the plastic years of early 
childhood, and the primary school receives them 
weakly, stunted, and often coarsened and corrupted 
by their surroundings. There is every probability 
that if they grow to manhood or womanhood at all 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 159 

they will become burdens upon society instead of 
bearers of burdens. 

If we are to attack at its source this common 
cause of social disease, the educational authority 
must supplement the deficiencies of those parents 
who are incapable, through one cause or another, of 
superintending the early development, both physical 
and moral, of their children. Such help will be 
more economical and more efficacious than the doles 
of Poor Law Authorities which may alleviate but 
rarely cure. Until educational authorities and the 
community recognise the extent of the mission of the 
school, ' many innocent and helpless children will be 
doomed to walk the downward path which leads to 
failure, inefficiency, ill-health, and crime.' ^ 

Day Nurseries 

The State acknowledges its duty of caring for and 
training certain children by paying grants for any 
over three years of age attending the public elementary 
schools. But it cannot stop there, for the first three 
years of a child's life are the most critical of all as to 
the permanent effect upon the child's development 
in after-life. It must help to establish day nurseries 
for the nurture and care during the daytime of infants 
whose parents must go to work. This is what is done 
in some other countries, and notably in France, which 
provides a fairly complete system of creches, caring 
for children from a few weeks old. The countries 

* Carlton, Education and Industrial Evolution, p. 287. (Macmillan.) 



160 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

which have instituted creches have done so to protect 
themselves against future loss and greater burdens. 

No one questions the fact that a good home is nature's 
provision for the proper care and treatment of the 
growing child. It has advantages that no other 
institution can reproduce. But if the mother is in- 
capable of taking care of the child, or if she has to go 
out to earn a living, the home loses its advantages. 
The wage-earning mother has generally no alternative 
but to leave her children of tender age to be cared 
for by older members of the family, if there are 
such, or to ' put them out ' to take their chance with 
the families of equally over-pressed or badly-housed 
neighbours, or to send them to be taken care of by 
a ' minder ' who makes a living by looking after a 
number of children in this way. All these methods 
are unsatisfactory, and many hard-driven mothers 
would gladly take advantage of a better system, 
and pay according to their means. 

It is of great importance, therefore, to the weKare 
of the community generally that under existing eco- 
nomic conditions there should be a sufficient supply 
of public day nurseries in the poorer districts of our 
industrial towns. Into them should be admitted 
children from, say, six weeks to three years old, whose 
mothers are obliged to go from home to work, or to 
work at home under unhealthy conditions. Neither 
sick children nor children from infected homes should 
be admitted. The day nurseries should be open on 
weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 P.M. With few exceptions, 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 161 

payments should be made daily or weekly by the 
parents for at least part of the child's keep. 

The buildings should be suitable for the purpose, and 
not merely altered buildings. They should be fitted 
up inexpensively like a nursery, with sleeping-places, 
pictures, toys, and small chairs. There should be 
ample room for the older babies to play in. Babies 
from eighteen months to three years old should spend 
most of the time in the garden when weather permits, 
and after meals they should sleep there in hammocks. 
Everything necessary for the health of the children 
should be provided, and a doctor should visit the 
nursery frequently. 

The institution should be under the care of a 
skilled nurse who understands baby nature. It 
should be under the joint supervision of the Local 
Government Board as the authority for public health 
and of the Education Department as the authority 
for education. The actual management should be 
left to a committee of ladies, and any inspection should 
be carried out by a lady inspector. Each day 
nursery should be supported partly by the sums paid 
by parents for the care and feeding of their children, 
partly by government grants and local rates, and 
partly, it would be hoped, by subscriptions, donations, 
and legacies from philanthropic individuals. 

Nursery Schools 

The babies at about the age of three should pass 
on to a nursery school in the same building. Here 

M 



162 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

the training of the child till five years of age should 
be continued in the spirit of an intelligent and devoted 
mother. There should be no rigid time-table, the 
length of the lessons should be at the discretion of the 
teacher, and formal lessons in reading, writing, and 
arithmetic should be excluded. The children should 
not be subjected to any undue mental or physical 
discipline. The children's natural instinct for move- 
ment should not be unduly checked, and in all the work 
of the nursery school we should keep in mind one of 
the important aims of the founder of the kinder- 
garten — ' the conscious nurture of the free self-activity 
of childhood.' The training of the child through spon- 
taneous and free activity is even more distinctly the 
aim of the Montessori method of education that is 
attracting so much attention at the present time, 
and the spirit of that method should be assimilated 
by the nursery school. 

There should be singing and dramatic games, story- 
telling, and memorisation and recitation of simple 
poetry. In this way the children will gain in language 
power, their imagination will be directed into worthy 
channels, and the seeds of good literary taste will be 
sown. Their mental powers should be further trained 
through much hand-work, brush-painting, weaving, 
building, modelling in wet sand (not clay), &c. Much 
time — at least half the day when weather permits — 
should be spent in the garden in tending the plants, 
in playing with sand and toys, and in games. In 
all the routine of the nursery school we should follow 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 163 

the spirit rather than the exact letter of the kinder- 
garten. Great attention should be given to the 
personal hygiene of the children, for there is perhaps 
no period of life during which care of the body will 
bring greater reward. Bad physical habits are not 
yet firmly rooted, and physical defects are as yet more 
easily dealt with — such as defects of the teeth, eye, 
ear, and throat. There should be adequate medical 
inspection. The children should be taught healthy 
habits of cleanhness, of rest, and of exercise. They 
should sleep for an hour a day after dinner, and this 
sleep should take place in the garden when the weather 
is good. 

All these are essential parts of the curriculum of 
a nursery school. Dinner should be provided for 
those of the infants whose parents wish them to stay 
for the midday meal. A small sum should be charged 
for it, and only in necessitous cases which have been 
carefully investigated should dinner be provided free. 
In the case of too many parents the need of working 
for their children is almost the only remnant of the 
sense of parental duty left, and, while protecting the 
helpless young from neglect, we should do nothing 
to weaken this feeling. Attendance at the nursery 
school should, however, be free, and the school should 
be an integral and grant-earning part of the school 
system under the Local Educational Authority.^ 

' In France and Belgium the age for compulsory school attendance 
is six, but France provides accommodation in Ecoles MaternelUs for 
about one-fourth of the children between two and six; and Belgium, 
before the outbreak of the great War in 1914, accommodated in 

M 2 



164 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

In fixing the amount of nursery school accommoda- 
tion necessary, the Educational Authority should keep 
in view the industrial and social conditions of the 
various parts of the area administered by it, and should 
place the schools so as to be most accessible to children 
whose home conditions are not satisfactory. There 
would still, doubtless, be room for creches and kinder- 
gartens supported by private individuals or societies 
in districts in which the Local Educational Authority 
has not provided day nurseries or nursery schools. 
Only, these private institutions would have to be open 
to inspection to ensure that the children in them are 
being treated on proper lines. 

Day nurseries and nursery schools should be 
utilised to give girls in the upper classes of the ele- 
mentary schools and the students in colleges of 
domestic science practical training in the care, 
management, and feeding of young children. Such 
pupils and students should learn to make garments 
for use in day nurseries, and they should do some 
of the washing and cooking. 

Under ideal, or even good, home conditions the 
recommendations of this chapter would not be neces- 
sary. But unfortunately such conditions are far 
from being universally attainable at the present 
time, and are not likely to be for some time to come. 
Until then public day nurseries and nursery schools 

Scales Gardiennes nearly one-half of her children between three and 
six years old. Switzerland, Germany, and the United States all 
make much fuller provision for the training of children under school 
age than we do. 



CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 165 

will be necessary to combat festering social diseases, 
and to give poor and neglected children the nurture 
and training which the home cannot or will not supply. 
They will amply repay the expense involved by 
creating and fostering a higher ideal of the respon- 
sibilities of the home towards its offspring, and by 
raising the physical, mental, and moral standards 
of future generations. 



CHAPTER XV 

EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH 

Writers on education have always maintained 
in theory the importance of cultivating a healthy 
body as the basis for the education of the mind.^ 
But until the last few years, this theory has been 
almost totally neglected in practice. No school- 
men can claim the credit, we fear, for the change 
that has recently taken place. Rather, the duty 
of maintaining the health of children at schools has 

1 Plato said man consists of a body and a soul ; ' we are not to 
fashion one without the other, but make them draw together like two 
horses harnessed to a coach.' It was Juvenal who first pointed out 
the necessity of mens sana in corpore sano. Montaigne said, ' It is not 
a soul, not a body, we are training up ; it is a man, and we ought not 
to divide him into two.' Locke, adopting Juvenal's aim of a sound 
mind in a sound body, said, ' He that hath these hath little more to 
wish for, and he that wants either of them would be but little the better 
for anji^hing else.' Rousseau wrote, ' The body must needs be vigorous 
in order to obey the soul. ... In order to learn to think we must 
exercise our bodies which are the instruments of our intelligence.' 
Herbert Spencer said, ' As remarks a suggestive writer, the first 
requisite to success in life is to be a good animal, and to be a nation of 
good animals is the first condition to national prosperity. ... It is 
becoming of especial importance that the training of children should 
be so carried on, as not only to fit them mentally for the struggle before 
them, but also to make them physically fit to bear its excessive wear 
and tear.' 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 167 

been forced upon them by the logic of events. There 
has been first of all the recognition, rather late in 
the day, that compulsory education in schoolrooms 
under present conditions means a certain amount 
of compulsory disease through infection. And the 
very fact that the State requires the attendance of 
children at school for eight or nine years imposes 
an obligation upon it to care for their physical welfare 
during that period. 

Then, too, there has arisen in recent times a 
general movement for the improvement of public 
health. There has been what the French call a 
Renaissance Physique. This is due no doubt partly 
to a fear of physical deterioration of the race under 
the high pressure of modern life. But it is due mainly 
to the fact that the public mind is now aroused to 
the primal importance of the health of the people. 
There can be no social progress or social efiiciency 
without it. We recognise now, as we never did before, 
that the most important of all our national resources 
is the good health of the citizens. Our economic 
efficiency and even our intellectual and moral achieve- 
ments as a people are dependent upon it. It has 
been truly said that a nation to be great must first 
make of its citizens good animals. Every kind of 
greatness and success has a physical basis. 

A natural concomitant to the movement for 
bettering the public health generally is the increased 
attention now paid to the health and strength of 
school children. The health and physical efficiency 



168 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

of the adult community in the next generation are 
built upon the physical welfare of the children of 
the present. The school is thus our most influential 
agency and our strategic starting-point for the pre- 
vention of disease and the enhancement of our national 
health and working-power. 

We have already in previous chapters drawn 
attention to the enormous and unnecessary waste 
of human life and potential power through the 
diseases of infancy and childhood. Some of the 
mortality and physical deficiency is due, as we showed 
in the preceding chapter, to the State making no 
provision for the physical well-being of neglected 
children below compulsory school age. Also, some 
of the injury to those above that age is inseparable 
from present school conditions. The mere subjec- 
tion of children to school routine and discipline, and 
to segregation and confinement in schoolrooms for 
a number of hours a day, during which they are 
deprived to a certain extent of sunshine and fresh 
air at an age when these are most important to their 
growth, is detrimental in some degree to the health 
of the children. 

But after every allowance is made for what may 
\^ be said to be unpre vent able, our present school 
arrangements cannot escape blame for spreading 
disease, and causing or aggravating physical defects. 
It is a striking fact, deserving of the careful atten- 
tion of educationists, that the health record of children 
not attending school is better than that of those 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 169 

attending it. The school has contributed to the 
number of cases of short-sightedness and of spinal 
curvature, and it has bred and spread infectious 
diseases.^ It has caused over-pressure in many 
cases, and by interfering in this way with nerve 
nutrition and growth it has injured the physical 
and mental development of the young. 

The over-pressure or nerve strain has been exerted 
in many different ways. Fine sewing and writing have 
been exacted from young children before even the larger 
muscles of their hands and arms have been trained, 
and the work has been done only at the cost of painful 
and exhausting effort. The over-pressure has been 
due sometimes to requiring pupils to pass examina- 
tions too difficult for them. It has been caused 
by requiring young children day after day to keep 
still for considerable periods when reasonable free- 
dom of movement might have been allowed. It 
has been caused by the overloading or bad arrange- 
ment of the curriculum, or by imposing tasks without 

^ Dr. Wood of Teachers' College, Columbia University, points out 
that ' Board of Health Reports show that cases of measles, diphtheria, 
scarlet fever, and whooping-cough increase in number from the beginning 
of the school year in September, when the housing up and segregating 
process begins, up to March or April when the children are more of the 
time out of doors. During the summer vacations the curves indicating 
the prevalence of contagious diseases are at the lowest. We are driven 
by such statistics to the conclusion that the school disseminates disease, 
and is responsible, in part at least, for the greater prevalence of 
contagious diseases of children during the winter months. Extra- 
ordinary precautions based upon improved scientific method will be 
necessary in order that the school may successfully safeguard the 
children from disease and infection.' {Ninth Year Book of the National 
Society for the Study of Education, p. 20. ) 



170 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

due consideration of individual limitations. As some 
one has said, what is over-pressure to some is only 
intellectual vagabondage to others. In many cases 
the overpressure has been due to school work being 
combined with underfeeding or parental neglect, or 
with the haK-time work system,^ or with employ- 
ment out of school hours. 

But whatever the form or cause of the over- 
pressure, the result of the strain if prolonged is 
inevitable — feebleness of constitution, vulnerability 

^ An Inter-Departmental Committee on Partial Exemption from 
School found that in England in 190G there were over 47,000 half- 
timers, mostly in industrial centres like Lancashire and Yorkshire. 
This system impairs the health and growth of tbe young workers. As 
soon as children become half-timers at the age of twelve they fall below 
the standard of the health and physique of the children in full attendance 
at school. A synopsis of returns given by Medical Officers in Lancashire 
published by the Schoolmaster in February 1913 showed that 'there 
were five times as many cases of physical defect of eye, ear, throat, &c., 
and of organic or general weakness noted by the doctor as re(]uiring 
medical treatment amongst half-timers as amongst other children.' 
Other evidence to a similar effect has been collected, and there can be 
no doubt that, in view of such facts, the half-time system should be 
abolished. 

Many children in full attendance at school are engaged out of school 
hours in street-trading, or in working at home or in shops. A Parlia- 
mentary Return in 1899 estimated that 178,000 children of school age 
were employed in this way in England. These figures revealed a serious 
state of affairs, and an Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical 
Deterioration (consisting of representatives of the Home Office, the 
Board of Education, and the Board of Trade) was appointed in 1904. 
The Committee found that the number of children concerned was at least 
200,000, and the evidence collected showed that serious intellectual, 
physical, and moral injury was being done to the children. The Report 
should be read. An outcome of it was the passing of the Employment 
of Children Act, 1904, which protects in some measure children in 
attendance at school from undue labour, and gives Local Authorities 
power to make further by-laws to regulate the employment of children 
in their area. 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 171 

to disease, and loss of efficiency which will impair 
the whole future life of the child. Education should 
aim at physical and mental equilibrium, at deve- 
loping body and mind simultaneously and in due 
proportion. The physical and intellectual dangers 
of over-pressure in education are even more obvious 
if we consider them from the point of view of the 
race. As Fouillee points out, so far as the race is 
concerned, ' a cultivated intellect, based upon a 
bad physique, is of little worth, since its descen- 
dants will die out in one or two generations.' ^ By 
over-pressure education impairs the physical and in- 
dustrial efficiency of future generations, and lowers 
the level of the race which it aims at elevating. 

School hygiene is a thing of recent growth. We 
might search through government reports or records 
of educational meetings a few years ago without 
discovering mention of it. At first it had the merely 
negative aim of preventing disease. The State 
considered that its care for the health of school- 
children ended with laying down regulations to 
prevent the spread of communicable disease, and 
with insisting upon the suitability of the site, and 
the proper lighting, ventilation, and sanitary con- 
ditions of school buildings. But now school hygiene 
has passed to the positive and more inspiring aim of 
developing to the utmost the health and vitality 
of the young through physical education, medical 
inspection and treatment, school feeding schemes 

^ Education from a National Standpoint, p. 32. 



172 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

for necessitous children, open-air schools, and a 
variety of special schools for physically and mentally 
defective children. 

The chief agencies for physical education are 
play, games, and physical drill. They should form 
a prominent element in our educational system, 
since it is mainly by the amount of care taken during 
the years the child is at school that the final develop- 
ment of the body is fixed. 

The significance of play, not only for physical 
but also for intellectual, moral, and social training, 
is a comparatively new theme in educational circles,-^ 
and much still remains to be done in utilising the 
play instinct more effectively as an aid to the edu- 
cation of childhood. Play is more than a mere vent 
for surplus vitality. It is the natural expression of 
child-life. It is nature's schooling, through which 
the child gets the greater part of his early educa- 
tion. It is the means by which the inner growth 
of the child is secured independently of formal in- 
struction. Play, moreover, is essential to the bodily 
welfare. Through it the young gain control over 
their muscles. It is not only the best form of 
physical exercise but it acts as a tonic to the whole 
nervous system, and keeps ' the springs of being 

^ This is the more surprising as the educational value of play was 
established by Froebel in The Education of Man as early as 1826. In it 
he says, for instance, ' We should not consider play as a frivolous thing ; 
on the contrary, it is a thing of profound significance. . . . By means 
of play the child expands in joy as the flower expands when it proceeds 
from the bud ; for joy is the soul of all the actions of that age.' 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 173 

ever fresh and flowing.' At every stage of educa- 
tion we must make room to some extent for what 
Rousseau called ' the noble art of losing time.' Tired 
powers must be allowed to recuperate. When mental 
exercise has fatigued one part of the brain, play 
must call into action other areas of the brain and 
send nerve currents to energise the tired cells. 

Play and games should be the central feature 
of the physical education of childhood to which all 
other forms should be supplementary. As far as 
possible the play of children should be free and spon- 
taneous — the expression of their own nature without 
adult restriction or guidance. It is an instinctive 
impulse, and it should be allowed to a large extent 
to take care of itself. This should be especially 
the case during the first eight or nine years of a 
child's life. Only in this way Avill play give scope 
for the individuality of the child and develop his 
sense of freedom and power. 

But physical education, for its full effect, must 
depend upon something more purposive than free play 
and games planned and carried out by the children 
themselves. There are many reasons for this. For 
one thing, their play if unsupervised may, as they 
grow older, be so strenuous as to lead to exhaustion. 
Also, children do not know what to play, and if left 
entirely to themselves their play as they get stronger 
will tend to degenerate into disorganised rough and 
tumble, pushing and teasing. They need assist- 
ance to suggest good games, and to be shown how 



174 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

to play them. How often do children ask to be 
told something to play ? Guidance and assistance 
are specially needed by the children in the poor 
and crowded districts of our great cities. The sur- 
roundings, generally ugly and squalid, are not such 
as to encourage play. Without space to play in, 
with imaginations fed only by the impressions of 
the streets, the joyous activity of these children 
is strangled, they do not know how to play, and 
unless they are helped to play, their vitality is 
lowered, and they and those who come after them 
become drags upon the race.^ 

Organised play and games — the physical exercise par 
excellence — should form a regular and daily part of the 
education given in every school, and in primary schools 
even more than in secondary. Their educational im- 
portance is fully recognised by the Regulations of the 
Board of Education for Primary Schools. They not 
only give pleasure and zest, but they accomplish, in a 
natural and unconscious fashion, most of the desired 
ends of physical education. They teach self-reliance, 
they increase physical and mental alertness, determina- 
tion and quickness of judgment. ' There is no better 

1 Mrs. Humphry Ward, in The Play-Time of the Poor (Smith, Elder 
& Co.), quotes words of Charles Lamb which are too true yet, despite 
the changes that have taken place in the hundred years since they were 
written : * The children of the very poor have no young times. They 
do not prattle ! The child of the slum is transformed betimes into a 
premature reflecting person. It was never surg to ; no one evjr told 
it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up to live or die as it happened. 
It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron realities of 
life.' 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 175 

work in the field of education than to inculcate a 
wholesome love of games in the playground, for to do 
this means the creation of an esprit de corps, a readiness 
to endure fatigue, to submit to discipline, and to sub- 
ordinate one's own powers and wishes to a common 
end. It is for this reason that schools which can 
raise football and cricket teams, swimming clubs, 
and cadet corps, are wont to exhibit such excellent 
work inside the walls of the school.' ^ 

It follows from what has been said that the work 
of the teacher in a primary or secondary school is 
not confined within the walls of the schoolroom. He 
should consider it a matter of professional obligation 
to take an interest in the games of the pupils in the 
playground and in the playing field. He will find that 
the pupils will welcome his assistance if given without 
officious interference, and that he will get an oppor- 
tunity of knowing his pupils and of influencing them in 
a way that is impossible by any other means. 

Now that we reahse the purpose and educational 
value of play, which, as Montaigne said, both trains 
the muscles and braces the mind, we see that the 
playground is one of the most essential parts of a school 
structure. Unfortunately primary schools are not as 
a rule so well off in this respect as secondary schools, 
and they ought to be. A school without an adequate 
playground should be considered somewhat of an 
educational deformity, and an injustice to the children 

^ Board of Education's Suggestions Jor the Consideration of Teachers, 
p. 76 (Cd. 2638). 



176 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

attending it. There are hundreds of schools, especi- 
ally in our large cities, with totally insufficient facilities 
for play, the excuse being the dearness of land. In 
parts of London the cost of playground accommoda- 
tion runs from lOs. to 145. per square foot. This is 
well-nigh prohibitive, and raises questions regarding 
our social economy that may have to be considered 
some day. Playgrounds in the basement or on the 
roofs of school buildings are poor substitutes for open 
playing grounds, and we must look forward to the time 
when cheap transport will enable workers to live away 
from congested districts, and will develop industries 
in villages remote from large towns. Then we may 
have a return to something of the rustic simplicity 
described by R. L. Stevenson : — 

Happy hearts and happy faces, 
Happy play in grassy places — 
That was how, in ancient ages, 
Children grew to kings and sages. 

In addition to playgrounds our school system 
requires adequate recreation grounds or playing fields 
in which organised games may be played, and in which 
the older pupils of the primary schools may play 
games like football, cricket, and hockey. In the 
planning of new towns, or the extension of present 
ones, open spaces for games should be reserved at 
such intervals as to be within easy reach of any given 
district. Meanwhile, there should be an arrangement 
made between the educational and the municipal 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 177 

authority for the more systematic utiHsation of portions 
of the pubhc parks for the games of school children. 
This plan is already in operation with great advantage 
in a number of our cities, but it requires fuller and 
wider adoption. 

Open spaces for play out of school hours are greatly 
required in crowded and slum districts. If children 
have nowhere to play but the streets, not only does their 
health suffer but they are subject to many dangers, 
to temptations to crime, and their play tends to 
organise itself on the street-gang basis. Playless dis- 
tricts are the hotbeds of juvenile delinquency. If 
adequate means were provided for public recreation 
in the densely populated parts of our large towns, 
less money would be required for juvenile and adult 
reform. Amusement is stronger than vice, and the 
best preventive for crime in the young is plentiful 
opportunities for play. 

The case for public playgrounds was forcibly 
stated in an address by Mr. J. A. Riis of New York. 
He said : ' We are coming to realise that if we want 
strong men and women as members of our social 
system we must have strong children ; we must 
protect them from the deadly toils of child-labour, 
and must give them parks and playgrounds rather 
than crowded streets. Life is a child's first right, 
and after that freedom from work and a place to 
play in during his tender years. There is a startling 
connection between our great army of tramps and 
child-labour and parkless slums. The boy without a 



178 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

playground is father of the man without a job. We 
have been manufacturing our own criminals by con- 
signing our city children to the streets.' 

School playgrounds ought to be open after school 
hours, and a larger number of open areas should be 
provided and equipped for out-of-door games and gym- 
nastics. If an inventory were made of all the vacant 
sites, waste places, and reclaimable areas in our cities, 
it would be found that many play spaces could be 
obtained at little public expense. Some capable and 
sympathetic person should be placed in charge of the 
playgrounds, to supervise the play of the children and 
to see that they are taught organised play. There 
would be little difficulty in getting voluntary helpers 
to give time and service to assisting this valuable 
work. ' There is no work in which the kindness and 
cleverness of English ladies can be employed with more 
good to the community and with more happiness to 
themselves than in teaching children to play.' 

The need for work of this kind is making a strong 
and successful appeal to all who are interested in edu- 
cation and general social conditions. Many supervised 
play-centres have been opened in London, largely 
through the instrumentality of Mrs. Humphry Ward 
whom we have just quoted. The movement has spread 
to several other towns in England, and valuable work 
along similar lines is being done by the Play Centre 
Association in Edinburgh. The play centres are sup- 
ported as yet mainly by private philanthropy, but the 
work cannot extend, as it should, until it is administered 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 179 

more largely by the educational authorities. It 
belongs to public education in the largest sense, for 
it is a means of developing the physical and moral 
nature of the young who may be unfortunately 
circumstanced, and of training them to a healthy and 
efficient manhood and womanhood. 

In addition to play and organised games, scientific 
physical training or gymnastics is an essential part of 
all education, both primary and secondary. Play 
and games alone are not a guarantee of all-round 
physical development. Parts of the physical system 
are not reached by the haphazard training they give. 
Physical efficiency is as much a matter of the nervous 
system as of the muscles, and the finer neuro-muscular 
co-ordinations are not developed by play and games 
alone. We require, in addition to these, physical 
training consciously and purposely directed. That is 
the recommendation made in the Report of the Inter- 
Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 
and of the Royal Commission on Physical Education 
in Scotland, and it is given practical effect to in 
the valuable and comprehensive syllabus of physical 
exercises issued since then conjointly by the English 
Board of Education and the Scotch Education 
Department. 

Physical training has many advantages which 
should ensure it a place in the education of every 
child. It gives a great deal of useful exercise in a 
limited time, and it does not require a large amount 
of space as play and games do. It is eminently useful 

N 2 



180 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

in developing symmetry and correct proportions — 
the Greek ideal of balance in physical development — 
and it can be adapted to individual needs and be used 
to remedy personal defects. It is a part of moral edu- 
cation in as much as it requires personal effort in the 
pursuit of a worthy ideal — namely, the perfection of 
bodily development. 

But physical training tends to be conventional 
and lacking in spontaneity as compared with other 
forms of exercise. Herbert Spencer rightly called it 
' factitious exercise.' It is too much like a lesson. 
Unless skill is shown by the teacher, it is uninteresting 
and wearisome from the absence of amusement. It 
involves exercise of will power and considerable mental 
as weU as physical strain, and it ranks with mathematics 
as one of the most fatiguing branches of instruction. 

Certain general conditions must be observed in 
physical training if the best results are to be obtained. 
The exercises should be given as far as possible out of 
doors. But at the same time, class-room calisthenics 
should be a recognised part of physical education. 
A few minutes devoted now and then to breathing 
exercises and suitable exercises of the arms, &c., will 
remove the bad effects of cramped and constricted 
postures in class-work. Another aim to be kept 
constantly in view by the teacher of physical training 
is to secure the interest of the pupils, so that they may 
take a pleasure in doing things whose performance will 
lead to good health. We must make the work instinct 
with the joy of Hving. Get away from formal, artificial 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 181 

kinds of movement. Utilise some of the movements 
involved in dancing (including folk-dancing) and games 
and, in the case of boys, in military drill. 

In physical training quality is more important than 
quantity. It is not increase of muscle merely, but of 
vitality and good health, that is our object. Further- 
more, health is a means and not an end. We cultivate 
the body to make it the fit bearer and ready servant of 
the cultured mind. ' Body for the sake of soul ' was 
one of the guiding principles of Plato, and it should 
never be lost sight of by those dealing with the 
physical aspects of education. 



CHAPTER XVI 

EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH (CONTINUED) 

Britain has not lagged long behind other countries 
in the matter of the medical inspection of school 
children. It was taken up first of all in a tentative 
way by some of the more progressive local educa- 
tional authorities, as in London, Bradford, &c., but 
it was soon found that partial effort was not enough. 
Evidence given before various Commissions — such as 
the Royal Commission on Physical Education in 
Scotland (1903), the Inter-Departmental Committee 
on Physical Deterioration (1904), and the Departmental 
Committee on Medical Inspection (1905) — showed that 
the school children were su£fering from ill-health and 
physical defects to an extent that had never been 
imagined. The evidence thus brought forward led 
Parliament to pass in 1907 the Education (Adminis- 
trative Provisions) Act making the medical inspection 
of school children compulsory in England and Wales. 
Similar provision for the northern part of the King- 
dom was made by sections 3, 4, and 6 of the Education 
(Scotland) Act, 1908. 

Medical inspection has already made great 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 183 

strides during the short time these Acts have been 
in operation. Each child is now examined by the 
medical officer at the beginning and end of his 
school career, and at suitable intermediate intervals. 
Annual reports have to be sent to the Board of 
Education by school doctors all over the country, 
and these are supplying much valuable information 
regarding the physical handicaps of school children. 
The facts that have been brought out by these first 
attempts at a systematic survey have been well-nigh 
overwhelming. They reveal an amount of weak- 
ness, defect, deformity, and disease of which we 
had no idea. A Report of Sir George Newman, 
the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, 
issued in 1914 states that : — 

' To speak generally, it may be stated that 
out of the six million children registered on 
the books of the Public Elementary Schools 
of England and Wales about 10 per cent, suffer 
from serious defect of vision, from 3 to 5 per 
cent, suffer from defective hearing, 1 to 3 per cent, 
have suppurating ears, about 10 per cent, have 
adenoids, inflamed tonsils, or enlarged cervical 
glands requiring surgical treatment, about 1 
per cent, have ringworm, 1 per cent, suffer 
from tuberculosis of readily recognisable form, 
from 1 to 2 per cent, are affected with heart 
disease, from 30 to 40 per cent, have un- 
clean heads or bodies, and probably more 



184 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

than half the children are in need of dental 
treatment. 

' These percentages are, of course, approxi- 
mate only ; they exclude children invalided 
from school ; they exclude the blind, deaf, 
crippled, mentally defective, and epileptic ; they 
exclude all cases of infectious diseases ; and 
they exclude also that great group of children 
who are suffering from indefinable malnutrition, 
debility, and low vitality, and who number 
not less than half a million. But even these 
underestimates, if worked out on six million 
children, yield a burden of disease which sug- 
gests not only much suffering and pain, but a 
serious degree of absolute incapacity to profit 
from the education which the State provides. 
Nor must we ignore the fact that this extent of 
child disease means an increase to the national 
burden of sickness and disablement in adoles- 
cence and adult life.' 

Evidence of this kind gives cause for anxiety, 
and shows the need for the medical inspection of 
school children. We know now that much that 
was attributed before to stupidity or inattentiveness 
or laziness on the part of the child is the result of 
defective hearing or eyesight, or abnormal growth of 
adenoids. Some of the defects that have been revealed 
by inspection, if they are not attended to, become more 
marked with the growth of the child, and may cause 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 185 

further harm by spreading to other parts of the body. 
Periodical medical inspection should discover these 
defects at an early stage, at which they will in most 
cases be easily cured. But medical inspection should 
do more. It should prevent the schools from being 
one of the chief means of spreading contagious and 
infectious diseases. It should see that the entire 
hygienic conditions of the schools are attended to, 
for it is not profitable to confine children for hours 
a day in badly ventilated and poorly lit class-rooms, 
and then have perhaps to build special schools for 
them when they have become anaemic and physically 
defective. 

There is no doubt that through the regular medical 
inspection of school children we are at the begin- 
ning of a far-reaching movement for preserving 
the health of the people, and for removing one 
of the great obstacles to social progress. The aim 
of medical inspection is not the accumulation of 
statistics, but, as pointed out in a memorandum of 
the Board of Education, ' the physical improvement 
and, as a natural corollary, the mental and moral ^ 
improvement of coming generations.' Emphasis must 
be placed on preventive measures, and the sources 
of disease must be attacked and eradicated. The 
nation wiU not derive the full benefit of medical 
inspection unless it is foUowed by action, either by 

* ' A weak or a sickly body is a grievous moral disability in so far 
as by narrowing the range of contact with life it stunts the character.' 
(MacCunn, The Making of Character , p. 55.) 



186 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

the parents or by the State, if necessary. The Act 
of 1907 gives the local educational authorities power 
to provide medical treatment,^ and many of them 
have done so in a manner deserving of all praise. 

More than half of the local authorities in Eng- 
land and a small fraction in Scotland have adopted 
schemes of medical treatment. There is great diver- 
sity in the schemes. The most efficient as well as 
the most economical plan appears to be that of the 
school clinic where professional attendance is given 
periodically for the treatment of the eyes and teeth, of 
ringworm and skin diseases of a contagious character, 
and of minor ear troubles, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, &c. 

In large centres a clinic can serve a group of 
schools. In Edinburgh, for instance, a clinic has 
been established in a central position, and in it 
treatment is provided for defective eyesight or teeth 
or for diseases of the skin ; and nurses follow up the 
cases in the children's homes and see, as far as 
possible, that the doctor's suggestions for treating 
the various ailments are carried out. The staff 
employed consists of the chief medical officer, three 
assistant medical officers, four trained nurses to 
assist the doctors in the general inspection work, and 
six trained nurses employed in connection with medical 



1 It was intended by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908 that 
the same power would be extended to Scotland. It was found, however, 
in the law courts five years later that the Act would not bear this inter- 
pretation. This was at once remedied by the Education (Scotland) 
Act, 1913, which made it legal for School Boards to incur expenditure 
on medical treatment of school children from the school rates 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 187 

treatment. In some parts of the country arrangements 
are made with hospitals or with general practitioners 
to supply the medical inspection and treatment. 

School authorities now receive grants from the 
Board of Education in aid of expenses incurred 
for medical treatment. In England and Wales 
the total grant for this purpose in the year 
1913-14 amounted to over £80,000 and in Scotland 
to £7,500, and in this way local educational authori- 
ties are encouraged to take general advantage of 
the powers conferred on them by the Act. In some 
districts a small fee is charged for treatment ; in 
others this is not done, as it often has the effect of 
making the parents refuse to allow their children to 
undergo the treatment. 

The experience of the last eight years shows 
that the compulsory medical inspection of school 
pupils has had a considerable effect in rousing parents 
to take a more inteUigent and active interest in the 
health of their children; but there are many dis- 
tricts in which the effect is as yet comparatively 
small. In some localities the repeated advice of 
school doctors and visits of school nurses fail to 
produce any effect, and as many as 60 per cent, of 
the children found to be ill go untreated. 

Many educational and medical experts who were 
at first opposed to State medical treatment of school 
children are now becoming convinced of its necessity. 
If we cannot compel the home by law to discharge 
its responsibilities, society must supply the want 



188 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

rather than allow the child to su£Fer damaging 
physical neglect. This is necessary in the interest 
not only of the child but of the whole community. 
It is preventive work of the best kind to attack diseases 
as early as possible. The Chief Medical Officer of 
the Board of Education says : ' Many of the diseases 
and physical disabilities of the adolescent and the 
adult spring directly out of the ailments of child- 
hood. For example, malnutrition, debility, dental 
caries, adenoids, and measles in childhood are the 
ancestry of tuberculosis in the adult. They pre- 
dispose to disease, and are, in a sense, both its seed 
and soil ; and thus it is that tuberculosis in the 
adult, which may be taken as a t3^e and example of 
preventable disease, is, in large part, the direct 
development of disease in the child.' Better spend 
thousands on medical treatment at an early stage 
than scatter millions later on in caring for human 
wreckage past repair. A compulsory school medical 
service will gradually raise the standard of health 
of the community. It is a necessary part of a sound 
scheme of national health insurance. 

Experience has demonstrated the value of the 
school nurse in connection with medical inspection 
and treatment. Where large numbers have to be 
dealt with the nurse can save the doctor's time for 
examination and diagnosis. She can assist in the 
routine work of inspection, and can follow up the 
work of the doctor and see that his directions for 
treatment are carried out. Under the supervision 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 189 

of the doctor, she can attend to minor ailments and 
injuries ; she can raise the standard of cleanHness 
among the dirtier children ; she can detect the 
early symptoms of infectious diseases, and in various 
ways diminish the risks of epidemics due to 
segregation. 

An important indirect benefit of the medical in- 
spection of school children is that parents are stimu- 
lated to aim at a higher standard of health in the home. 
While visiting the homes the nurse can consult with 
parents concerning the medical treatment the children 
should have, and she may get opportunities of giving 
suggestions, if asked to do so, regarding the home care 
of children and home hygiene in general. The school 
nurse is thus a valuable intermediary between the 
doctor and the school on the one hand, and the school 
and the home on the other. She is worth many 
attendance officers, and should without further delay 
take the place of that functionary in our educational 
system. 

The coming of the school doctor and school nurse 
is one of the far-reaching developments of modern 
education. Their appearance in the educational field 
marks the beginning of a movement for the im- 
provement of public health through the agency of 
the school. Their aim till now has been the detection 
and cure of disease ; their next aim will be the pre- 
vention of disease ; and the final and greatest aim of 
all will be the raising, through the school, of the 
standard of health and efficiency of the whole race. 



190 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

At every suitable opportunity during a child's 
school career he should be taught how to live in a 
healthful manner ; and a simple course of instruction 
in the laws of health should be given to every child 
during at least his last year or two at school.^ This 
health side of education is of such importance that 
other parts of the curriculum must be jettisoned, if 
necessary, to make room for it. The instruction should 
deal with matters connected with the actual lives of 
the children, and not with matters beyond their range. 
The teaching of physiology and anatomy is uninterest- 
ing to children at the elementary school stage, and is 
pedagogically unsound. Attention should be given to 
health rather than to disease. We should teach the 
general facts and principles relating to hygienic living, 
^d we should do this rather by precept and the 
inculcation of healthful habits than by reasoned ex- 
planations of the rules laid down. There is no reason, 
for instance, apart from insufficient lavatory accom- 
modation, why we should not teach the care of the teeth 
by requiring each child to have his own numbered 
tooth brush and to use it at least once a day in school 
hours. In this way the habit of teeth-cleaning would 
be formed. 

Health teaching should naturally consist of two 
factors : ( 1 ) personal hygiene, dealing with all that 
pertains to preserving a sound and effective body, 



^ There is a good Outline Scheme for Hygiene and Temperance 
Teaching in the Board of Education's Suggestions for the Consideration 
of Teachers. (Cd. 2638. His Majesty's Stationery Office.) 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 191 

such as food, rest and sleep, exercise, care of the 
teeth, cleanliness, clothing ; and (2) public hygiene, 
dealing with everything relating to the maintenance 
of surroundings favourable to the health of the 
community, such as fresh air, light, sanitation, and 
public efforts to stamp out communicable forms of 
disease. 

All these things should be taught in a non-tech- 
nical, practical, and habit-forming way. In dealing 
with diet we should give the children some idea of the 
fight by public authorities for pure milk and unadulter- 
ated foods. In dealing with infection we should show 
them the nature and meaning of the war against 
tuberculosis. Simple ambulance lessons might be 
given. Girls should get instruction in the care of young 
children and the care of the sick. Lessons on temper- 
ance should be given to the older pupils, but sensational 
details and exciting descriptions of the unhappy effects 
of intemperance on society, or of the pathological 
effects on the individual, are more likely to do harm 
than good. The lessons rather should deal with the 
social and economic evils resulting from drunkenness, 
and the beneficial effects of temperance on personal 
health, happiness, and working power. 

As we have said, the school is only awakening now 
to its responsibility in regard to the health of the 
children, and for the success of the movement that has 
begun it is necessary that teachers should get, as a 
part of their professional training, a broad and thorough 
preparation in all that pertains to the public health. 



192 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

The heaviest toll levied on human life by any 
one disease is that exacted by tuberculosis. England 
is losing over 35,000 and Scotland over 5000 people 
a year by phthisis alone, and investigation has found 
that from 25 to 35 per cent, of the children of these 
families are infected, and will succumb to the disease 
unless special precautions are taken. The chief pre- 
ventative is fresh air. The report of the Departmental 
Committee on Tuberculosis, published in 1913, stated 
that ' There is urgent need for a wide application of 
the principle of open-air treatment and education by 
means of open-air schools (day and residential), 
open-air classes, &c.' By early open-air treatment 
in the schools and in the homes there is no reason 
why this dread disease should not in course of 
time be reduced to narrow limits, if not entirely 
eradicated. 

Part of the expense of open-air schools might in 
some cases be defrayed from the grant in aid of buildings 
for sanatorium purposes under the National Insurance 
Act. It is more important in the case of tuberculosis 
than probably any other disease that public funds 
should be expended in early prevention rather than 
later amelioration. But open-air schools or classes 
would be a benefit not only to the tuberculous, but 
to the anaemic, the convalescent, and the delicate 
child, and even to the child of ordinary physique 
whose parents believe in purer air and fuller sun- 
light than are to be found in the ordinary school- 
room. 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 193 

The typical open-air school is a collection of unpre- 
tentious sheds and verandas within easy reach from 
a town, and yet far enough removed from it to be 
among green fields and pine woods. Here the sickly 
children are oxygenated and ozoned back to health, 
while they are all the time making good progress in 
their studies. A child in the open air is more alert and 
capable of greater mental effort than if confined in 
an ordinary class-room. The school work and school 
hours are arranged on more rational lines than in an 
ordinary school. Nature- work is more emphasised 
and there are more frequent breaks for breathing exer- 
cises, singing, physical exercises, and games. After 
dinner the children rest and sleep in the open air for 
about two hours in well-blanketed deck-chairs, and 
then after a period of play there are more lessons for, 
it may be, an hour and a half or two hours. The 
afternoon instruction is often devoted to nature alone, 
and the lessons are given in the woods and fields 
or in the garden. The children can continue the out- 
door lessons in cold weather or in winter if they are 
well protected by warm clothing, caps, and mittens, 
and have the lower part of the body encased in a sort 
of sleeping bag. 

The movement in favour of open-air schools is 
spreading all over the country, and progressive 
educational authorities everywhere are taking part 
in it. They see that it is their duty to consider 
the health as well as the education of every child 
under their charge. The movement is incidentally 



194 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

modifying our ideas regarding the school curriculum, 
and is influencing in a marked degree the construc- 
tion of ordinary schools, so that all pupils may in 
future enjoy the advantages of light and air hitherto 
reserved for the tuberculous. It is impossible to 
make provision for all school children in open-air 
schools, but the adoption of open-air principles in 
the ordinary school would result in the prevention 
of much disease and suffering. The class-rooms 
in modern school buildings should be placed, as far 
as possible, to face the sun, and should open into a 
veranda by means of sliding glass partitions. Cer- 
tainly no new school building should be erected 
without at least one open-air class-room for weakly 
children. 

Open-air schools have passed beyond the experi- 
mental stage. There is no doubt they are saving 
the lives of many children, besides enabling others 
of poor physique and unfortunate heredity to over- 
come their physical handicap, so far as that is pos- 
sible, and at the same time to hold their own in 
intellectual training. A great improvement to health 
is secured in these schools even if the children go 
home every night and for the week-ends, but much 
better results are secured when the children reside 
entirely in the schools. Experience has shown that 
three months in a residential open-air school do 
more good than double that period in a day open-air 
school. The residential open-air school is likely 
to be the type of the future. It need not be 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 195 

expensive,^ but in any case we should estimate the 
cost of such schools not only in pounds sterling but 
also in terms of the life, health, and increased efficiency 
secured to the nation by means of them. 

^ The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech in 1914 
stated that it was the intention of the Government to give a special 
grant for open-air schools. 



o 2 



CHAPTER XVII 

EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH (CONTINUED) 

One of the important means of influencing public 
health consists in the proper nutrition of the young. 
Poor food, badly cooked food, and deficient food 
seriously interfere with the mental and physical 
growth of children.^ As a result of the compulsory 
medical inspection of children we are now in posses- 
sion of fairly accurate information regarding the 
extent to which malnutrition prevails, and valu- 
able evidence on the point is contained in the Reports 
of the various Commissions referred to in the pre- 
ceding chapter. It is startling to be told in these 
Reports that from seven to ten per cent, of school 
children are regularly underfed, and that the per- 
centage rises to a serious extent in poorer districts. 
In London at least 60,000 of the children attending 
the public elementary schools were found prior to 
1906 to be badly nourished, and similar serious con- 
ditions have been shown to exist in other towns, such 
as Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee. 

^ See chapter vii. of The Children^ by Professor Darroch. (London : 
T. 0. & E. 0. Jack.) 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 197 

Underfeeding and malnutrition are not neces- 
sarily accounted for by the poverty of the parents, 
although that is by far the most frequent cause. 
There are many other causes at work — such as the 
daily absence of the mother from home when she 
is acting as a wage-earner, or the wilful neglect of 
parents and the waste of family means in drink, 
or the ignorance of parents in regard to the most 
desirable forms of food for children. Frequently 
the food given is non-nutritious, and often it is posi- 
tively injurious. Proteids and fats should form 
a larger proportion of the diet of children than of 
adults. How many parents are ignorant of that, 
and of the foods that best supply the necessary 
materials ? Malnutrition is undoubtedly one of the 
most potent causes of defective physique. When 
we consider the amount of improper feeding of 
children that prevails, both as to kind and quantity, 
we need not be surprised at the prevalence of rickets 
in many districts and of bad teeth everywhere. 

Children who day after day are insufficiently or 
improperly fed suffer physically, intellectually, and 
even morally. An American author summarises the 
effects of underfeeding and other harmful conditions as 
follows : ' It has been shown over and over again that 
the children of the poor are behind better favoured 
children in physical development ^ in every way, 

^ The Medical Officer of Bradford Education Committee found 
that in the poor class schools in Bradford the children were less in height 
by I to 2| inches, and in weight | to 6^- lb., as compared with children 
of the same age in the better class schools. 



198 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

often as much as two or three years. They are shorter 
in stature, lighter in weight, narrower of chest, and 
feebler of grip. Moreover, the evils do not end with 
school life ; for the constitution is so enfeebled that 
in after years the results are extremely severe. The 
victims of poverty in childhood fall an easy prey to 
disease ; they are soon exhausted, and become unfitted 
early in life for the work of the world. Much of our 
pauperism and crime may be traced back to this evil 
of underfeeding in childhood.'^ Children lacking 
proper food do not possess the physical capacity to 
profit by the education they receive,^ and the public 
money spent on their instruction is to a considerable 
extent wasted. 

But the evil does not end there. Starved in 
body and mind, these unfortunate children are only 
too likely to swell the ranks of those who form a 
large part of our social problem and clog the wheels 
of social progress. Of all the evidence given before the 
Committee on Physical Deterioration, none was more 
striking than the statement by Dr. Eichholz, one of the 
Medical Officers of the Board of Education : ' I hold 
a very firm opinion which is shared by medical men, 
members of Education Committees, managers, teachers 
and others conversant with the condition of school 
children, that defective nutrition lies at the base 
of all forms of child degeneracy ; that is to say, if 

* John Spargo, How Foreign Municipalities feed their Children. 

' Sir George Newman states that the percentage of mentally dull 
children among the underfed is considerably larger than among children 
generally. 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 199 

we take steps to ensure the proper, adequate feeding 
of children the evil will rapidly cease.' 

The pressing importance of these matters is now 
fairly well understood, and various methods have 
been adopted to deal with them. A large number of 
towns have attempted through voluntary agencies 
to provide for the underfed children by supplying 
midday meals, either free or at a nominal cost. But 
charity, however admirable its spirit, always tends 
to have a pauperising and humiliating influence. 
Moreover, sporadic local efforts may deal with transi- 
tory needs, but they are quite inadequate to cope 
with so persistent and widespread an evil. No 
individual efforts can solve what is really a national 
problem. Probably not more than half the total 
number of children who need food have been reached 
by such efforts. Systematic provision must be made 
by law for the feeding of hungry children. Nothing 
but a national scheme by which every child shall 
receive, without humiliating conditions, all that is 
necessary for its physical as well as its intellectual 
development can meet the wants of the case.^ 

It was considerations such as these that led to the 

1 Thirty years ago a proposal to feed the hungry children in the 
public elementary schools would have been derided, and now such 
a proposal has the support of social workers and politicians of all 
parties and in all countries. In our own country it was a Liberal 
Government that passed the Acts of 1906 and 1908. The Social Reform 
Committee of the Unionist Party has approved of these measures, 
and has recommended that the powers conferred on local authorities 
of dealing with feeding, &c., be made compulsory, not optional. 
Labour and Trade Unionist Members of Parliament have year after 
year at their annual congresses made similar proposals. 



200 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

passing of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act in 
1907. This Act empowers local educational authorities 
in England and Wales to make arrangements for the 
feeding of necessitous children, and to co-operate for 
this purpose with any voluntary committee already 
in existence. The Act is very careful and cautious 
in its procedure. Only in cases where no such com- 
mittee exists and where other funds are not available, 
or are insufficient for the purpose, is a local authority 
empowered to incur the expense of providing the 
necessary food. The Local Authority must prove 
to the Board of Education that only those children 
are being fed who are unable, through lack of food, to 
take full advantage of the education provided for them. 
Power is given to recover the cost of the meals from 
the parents, unless it has been ascertained, after full 
inquiry, that a parent is unable to pay the necessary 
sum through no fault of his own. The cost of the 
provision of meals under the Act must never exceed 
the produce of a halfpenny in the pound on local rates. 
More liberal provision was made for the feeding of 
necessitous children in Scotland by Sections 3, 6, and 
16 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908. The Act 
gave the School Boards power to provide meals, if they 
thought it necessary, during holidays and on other 
days on which the school was not open for ordinary 
instruction, for poor children generally return to school 
physically the w orse for a holiday ; it did not place a 
limit on the expenditure out of the rates for the pro- 
vision of meals ; and it gave the Education Depart- 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 201 

ment unlimited powers of giving financial aid. Indeed, 
at the present time the Department is giving a grant 
equal to not more than one-half of the net expenditure 
incurred by any School Board in providing meals 
to necessitous children attending any school within 
its district. Immediately after the great European 
War broke out in August 1914 Parliament passed 
amending Acts giving practically identical powers 
to the above to England, Wales, and Ireland. 

School feeding has only been in force in this 
country for eight or nine years, and it is too soon 
yet to tell what its full effects, beyond relieving 
many cases of distress, may be. Careful tests applied 
in Bradford and other places have shown that there 
has been a steady improvement in the health and 
physique of the children concerned. Incidentally it 
is inculcating a wiser choice of food in the homes, 
and it is training the children to enjoy varied, 
nutritious, and wholesome food. There is in this 
the making of a strong race in the future, for the 
children are getting not only their own standard of 
healthy living raised, but they will be likely to take 
care that their children in turn get good wholesome 
food. Also, where the system is properly organised, 
and the meals are served under the supervision of 
the teachers, the children have an opportunity of 
learning habits of tidiness, mannerliness, courtesy, 
and unselfishness. 

Two suggestions only need be made. In the first 
place all the children, whether poor or not, should be 



202 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

encouraged to eat their midday meal together, and the 
dining system should be regarded as a part of the 
school curriculum. There is power for this under 
the Acts. In no way should any distinction be 
visible between the children of paying and non- 
paying parents. The other suggestion is that adop- 
tion of the power to provide meals in necessitous 
cases should be made compulsory, not permissive ; 
for it is really a part, and an important part, of the 
whole system of physical education. 

The Board of Education has done meanwhile all 
that it can, by issuing circulars to local educational 
authorities calHng their attention to their powers in 
connection with the provision of meals, and to the 
great advantage that might accrue by exercising them. 
But one-third of the authorities have as yet done 
absolutely nothing in the matter. As the Unionist 
Social Reform Committee on Education very per- 
tinently asks : ' Why should a necessitous child 
be fed in one district and not in another ? The 
Committee, seeing no justification for the existing 
diversity of treatment, recommend that the adop- 
tion of the Act should be made compulsory. It is 
important, however, that the meals should not be 
used as a grant-in-aid of poverty and low-paid labour. 
The meals should be regarded as an integral part of 
school medical treatment. The administration should 
be a section of the school medical officer's department, 
not an annexe of the office of the Board of Guardians.' ^ 

^ The Schools and Social Eeform, p. 7. 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 203 

It is often objected against legislation of the 
kind we have been referring to that it runs the risk 
of undermining parental responsibility, and may lead 
to much abuse on the part of careless or wicked 
parents. There are parents who will take advan- 
tage of any legislation. In their case the feeling 
of parental responsibility is already insignificant, 
and the only course is to prosecute them rigorously 
under the Education Act of 1906 and the Children 
Act of 1908. It is a dangerous thing to weaken 
parental responsibility, but it is still more dangerous 
to the State to neglect the well-being of the children. 
It is wise to see first that the hungry children are 
fed, and then, after due investigation, to take mea- 
sures to enforce responsibility upon the parents. 
John Stuart Mill in his book on ' Liberty ' said as long 
ago as 1859 : ' It still remains unrecognised that to 
bring a child into existence without a fair prospect 
of being able, not only to provide food for its body, 
but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral 
crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and 
against society ; and that if the parent does not 
fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, 
at the charge, so far as possible, of the parent.' 

Logic as well as humanitarian ideals make it 
necessary that the State should protect neglected 
school children. Since the State has gone so far 
in providing education for the children, fortunate 
and unfortunate alike, it must see that they get the 
necessary physical care and nourishment to enable 



204 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

them to derive benefit from the education furnished 
at so much public expense. We must in fairness 
recognise that the complex social and industrial 
conditions of to-day have weakened the influence 
of the home, and have made it more difficult for 
parents to meet their responsibilities. This has made 
a certain amount of State paternalism a modern 
necessity. Free education, free medical advice and 
treatment, and a certain measure of free feeding 
were bound to come. But in taking care that every 
child gets an opportunity of leading a healthy and 
useful life, nothing must be done to relieve the parent, 
who is able, but may be unwilling, from bearing his 
due share of the general burden. 

One of the latest additions to our educational 
system is the School for Mothers.^ Many mothers 
are hopelessly ignorant regarding matters relating 
to the laws of health and the feeding and care of 
babies. As a consequence there is a great amount 
of mortality and of permanent injury to health, 
especially during the first year or two of life.^ This 

^ The first school for mothers seems to have been started at Ghent 
in 1902. Such schools are, however, not quite new in this country. 
From the earliest days of kindergartens there have been in connection 
with them classes or clubs for mothers in which mothers have, by means 
of informal talks, received instruction in matters connected with the 
welfare of children. The object of these clubs, however, has been to 
influence the ideas of the home rather than to give definite health 
instruction. 

2 In the year 1913 there were born in Scotland 121,006 children, 
of whom 3217 died within the first week, 5009 within the first month, 
9,559 wdthin the first six months, and 13,163, or 11 per cent, altogether, 
in the first twelve months. When we consider that every death of a 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 205 

is a great loss to the nation, and a serious hindrance 
to the progress of society. It is largely due, as we 
have said, to the defective education of the mothers. 
Consequently the Board of Education, in July 1914, 
agreed to recognise schools for mothers as part of 
the educational equipment of the country, and to 
pay to the managers of such schools grants up to 
fifty per cent, of their approved expenditure. 

In these schools instruction is given to mothers 
before and after the birth of the child in the care and 
management of infants and little children. The work 
centres round infant consultations with a doctor in 
attendance, and the mothers bring their babies to 
be weighed, and receive advice as to the general 
care and nurture of the little ones. Following on 
this, volunteer workers with practical experience of 
baby-rearing visit the homes of the mothers, and 
advise and help them in carrying out the directions 
they have received. To co-ordinate the work of 
these visitors, and keep it on suitable lines, they 
generally act along with a skilled woman who has 
been trained for this kind of work. The mothers 
also attend class meetings at which simple instruc- 
tion is given in mother-craft, home-nursing, and 
the like. In order to make the teaching as useful 
and practical as possible, it is required that the work 
of these schools should be co-ordinated with that 

child means an absolute loss of potential capital and productive power, 
we see the appalling loss that such a high death-rate amongst children 
involves to the nation. 



206 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

of baby clinics and infant dispensaries, and of day 
nurseries and nursery schools, if there are such in the 
district. 

The problem confronting the schools for mothers 
and all those other institutions is to save the 
twenty or thirty per cent, of children that die in 
early years, to avoid tuberculosis, rickets, and the 
like, that cause so large a part of the diseases of 
later life. If they do these things they will be worth 
aU the money and labour spent on them, and they 
will help to rear a healthier manhood and woman- 
hood in the nation. Nevertheless, they point to 
a defect in our educational system. It is rather 
late in the day to be giving instruction when women 
are either mothers or expectant mothers. The proper 
time for this is in continuation classes and before 
marriage. 

Increased attention by school authorities to the 
health of the young in the ways we have indicated 
in these chapters is of prime importance for the 
progress of society. The average length of life is 
now probably double what it was in this country 
a century ago. Think what this means to the 
working power and happiness of the nation. By 
better health-teaching and physical training of our 
immense school population we could still further 
increase the average span of life, we could check 
contagious disease, and we could diminish the amount 
of sickness, suffering, and failure in the world. The 



EDUCATION AND HEALTH 20T 

school must help to create still higher ideals of 
health and physical efficiency. Every individual 
is a temporary depository of a part of the force of 
the race, and it should be an aim of education to pre- 
serve this force in its most efficient form for the 
good of the individual and of society. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVE CHILDREN 

Even after the best arrangements have been made 
in the ordinary pubHc schools for the intellectual 
and physical education of the young, there remains 
an unfortunate residuum for the education of which 
special measures have to be provided. It consists 
of the physically or mentally deteriorate, the cripple, 
the blind, the mute, the feeble-minded, and the epi- 
leptic. These have always been regarded with pity, 
but the care of them has been left hitherto to 
charity. The State made no provision for its un- 
fortunate wards beyond food, clothing, and shelter 
through the Poor Law authorities. It acknowledged 
no responsibility for their training beyond what 
the ordinary school provided, and, as most of these 
children were unfit for such instruction, the State 
did nothing to enable them to become useful and 
self-supporting members of society. They were re- 
garded as a burden on society and an obstacle to 
social progress. 

It is only during the last quarter of a century 
that the care and treatment of defectives have been 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 209 

regarded as a function of education, and the provi- 
sion of suitable schools for them a necessary part 
of our national system of education. The first defec- 
tives to be provided for were the blind and deaf- 
mute children. Their education was made compulsory 
in England in 1893, and in Scotland two years 
earlier. The Education Act of 1906 made the care 
and training of defective children a definite duty 
of the public educational authorities. Also, one 
of the results of the medical inspection introduced 
by that Act has been to sift out the children more 
thoroughly, and to discover which of them need 
special care and education. Timely medical diagnosis 
and remedial treatment have already reclaimed 
many, and prevented further deterioration in others. 

Defective children may conveniently for our purpose 
be divided into three classes : the physically defective, 
the mentally defective, and the morally defective. 
This classification is not by any means rigidly accurate, 
for these various forms of deficiency are to some extent 
interdependent. Mental and moral deficiencies may 
have a physical cause. Imperfect development of 
the brain and impairment of the nervous system 
produce mental defects, but nevertheless they are 
fundamentally physical defects. Again, moral defects 
are often due to mental deficiencies — lack of judg- 
ment, weak perception, and inability to grasp the 
necessary consequences of actions — all of which may 
have ethical implications. 

The efforts now being made to train and educate 



210 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

\ I these defective children are leading to important 
results. They are enabling many of the unfortunate 
children to become, to a greater or less extent, useful 
and efficient citizens instead of being permanent burdens 
upon their friends or the community, and they are 
protecting society from some who, untrained and uncon- 
trolled, would grow up to be criminals or wastrels. 
' In industrial processes it has become the commercial 
ideal that there shall be no residue left that would 
go to waste ; the secondary product or by-product 
now often assumes greater importance even than the 
primary. Likewise, the apparently subnormal child 
may be developed into a useful by-product, and among 
the subnormal children there may be found such as 
will become leaders if developed in the right direction. 
And if it were only that the injurious residues are 
rendered harmless, as is done in factories with the 
greatest care, and as ought to be done in our educational 
institutions with equal care, society will be saved an 
enormous amount of damage. When once we will 
apply the same painstaking, minute, and completely 
organised methods which are followed in commerce 
and industry to the process of moulding the human 
material, we shall eliminate from society the greater 
part of those injurious elements which now threaten 
its health and even existence.' ^ 

In addition to the open-air schools dealt with 
in a preceding chapter, there are now in nearly all 

* M. P. E. Groszmann, Proceedings of the Department of Superin- 
tendence, p. 22 of Report of the National Education Association for 1910. 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 211 

large centres Special Schools ^ for physically defective 
children — for the deformed, for cripples, for children 
suffering from diseases of the bones or joints, from heart 
disease, from epilepsy — indeed from anything that 
unfits them from mixing with the healthy children 
in ordinary schools. They are collected in ambulances 
and omnibuses and driven to school in the morning 
and taken home again in the afternoon. A midday 
meal is provided, for which a small sum is charged, but 
in very necessitous cases no charge is made. These 
children are so improved in body and educated and 
trained in mind in the special school, that Avhen they 
grow up they are able, in the majority of cases, to 
be either wholly or partially self-supporting ; but 
others, probably about thirty per cent., either do not 
live or are unable to support themselves. 

The first schools for physical defectives were, as we 
have already said, the so-called asylums for the bhnd 
and the deaf. The bhnd are no longer considered 
helpless dependents on eleemosynary aid. They are 
now educated and trained for economic pursuits like 
other children. It is cheaper to educate them for ten 
or twelve years than to keep them for life in charitable 
institutions, as used to be the case. The feeling of 
helplessness and almost total dependence upon others 
was the cause of more unhappiness to them than even 
the lifelong darkness to which they were condemned. 

In some cases, especially in other countries such 

1 The term ' School for Defectives ' is often^used, but it is obviously 
harsh and objectionable. 

p 2 



212 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

as the United States and Germany, the bhnd are 
educated in the ordinary schools alongside seeing 
children. They are taught to read and write and 
count by the Braille method, and with a little more 
individual attention do the same lessons as the see- 
ing pupils. But the dangers to which, on account of 
their blindness, they are exposed on the way to and 
from school and in the playground, and other diffi- 
culties of an educational kind, render it advisable upon 
the whole that the blind should be taught in special 
institutions. Methods suitable to their blindness are 
adopted, and a large amount of handwork with a view 
to some particular industrial pursuit is included in 
the course of instruction. Suitable outlets for the 
blind are found to be piano-tuning and the teaching 
of music, and some pupils are trained for these occupa- 
tions. Unfortunately many of the callings formerly 
open to the blind are being crowded out by modern 
inventions and the application of machinery to in- 
dustry. As the pressure upon the blind increases 
we must give them fuller and richer education, and 
more highly trained intelligence to enable them to 
cope with modern conditions. The most highly gifted 
and energetic among them should have opportunities 
for preparing for suitable forms of professional life.^ 

With the deaf-and-dumb, also, it is becoming 
increasingly difficult to earn a Hving. The remedy 

1 New York State has passed a law that any blind student attending 
a university, college, or technical institution, other than a school 
for the blind, should have a reader provided for him at a salary not 
exceeding £60 per annum. 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 218 

is to increase their intellectual training and to give 
them better vocational training. As in the case of 
the bhnd, the best service we can do them is to give 
them an education higher, more practical, and more 
vocational than the ordinary day school provides, and 
more general than the institutions in which they are 
trained now give them . There should be an opportunity 
provided for the most gifted amongst them to receive a 
higher education in an institution in this country, like 
the Gallaudet College for the Deaf in the United States. 

In the popular mind there is no distinction between 
the deaf and the deaf-and-dumb. As a matter of 
fact, comparatively few of the deaf are dumb — that is, 
unable to articulate. The organs of speech are intact 
in almost every case, but the child born deaf does 
not hear what is said to him, and consequently does 
not learn to speak by imitation of sound. If the 
organs are not exercised the muscles atrophy. As soon 
as parents learn that their child is deaf they should 
speak to him as to a hearing child, they should train 
him perseveringly to move his lips in imitation o f 
theirs, and persistence will lead, unless there is an 
organic defect, to the production of a natural voice. 
It may be too late, and in any case it will be harder, 
to do this when the child goes to school. 

At school the child should be taught, as far as 
possible, to speak and interpret speech by the oral 
method and not by finger signs. This requires infinite 
patience, especially on the part of the teacher, but 
it is worth while. In watching the facial movements 



214 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

of the speaker the child will learn to lip-read, to 
understand what the speaker is saying, and this will 
be an invaluable asset to him in ordinary life. The 
cure for poor lip-reading is more lip-reading, not 
recourse to signs or written language. The children 
have to be trained to the habit of concentration. 
Exaggerated motions of the lips and facial muscles 
should not be indulged in by the teacher, for they 
mislead the child as to the nature of the muscular 
movements necessary to produce certain sounds. 
Distinct speech at ordinary rate without mouthing 
is what the child needs. All the while, the child should 
be trained to imitate the movements and reproduce the 
sounds. With persistent practice from early years there 
is no reason why the majority of deaf children should 
not be able to understand what is said to them, and 
should not be understood by those who hear them. 

The mentally defective range from the merely 
backward to the hopelessly imbecile. Recent investi- 
gations show that there is a large number, possibly eight 
or ten per cent.,^ of dull and backward children who 

^ Galton's inquiries gave 7*7 per cent, as the proportion of children 
below the average in mental capacity ; other investigators have 
placed it as high as 12'G. A difficulty has been to arrive at a generally 
accepted standard of normality and subnormality by which we can 
recognise what constitutes a normal or subnormal child. The difficulty 
goes farther back, for we have no universally accepted standardised 
tests of mental capacity by which a child may be definitely classified as 
normal or subnormal. Binet in France, and l4ay and Meumann in 
Germany have done much in devising suitable tests and establishing 
norms, but the results of their experiments are not yet in the finished 
form suitable for general use. 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 215 

all through their school course are behind the pupils 
of their own age in the school. Their presence in 
a class impedes the effectiveness of the teaching, 
and hampers the progress of the children of normal 
mentality. The instruction is not suited to them, 
year by year they fall farther behind those of like 
age, they never finish even an elementary education, 
and in consequence they leave school ill prepared for 
the duties of life. 

The extent and causes of this backwardness are 
engaging the attention of many educators in order to 
find the suitable remedies for it. Probably in only a 
minority of cases is mental inferiority due to heredity. 
In many cases the backwardness has its origin in 
unfavourable environment, and the habitual lack of 
sufficient air, food, or sleep. The brain is sound, but 
it is not getting a chance. In still a larger number 
of cases the backwardness springs solely from physical 
conditions — defects of eyesight or hearing, adenoids 
or enlarged tonsils producing imperfect breathing, 
defective teeth causing malnutrition, heart ailments, 
anaemic and bad nervous conditions. The mind 
works through the physical system, and if this is en- 
feebled the vigour and efficiency of the mental powers 
also suffer. 

Our public elementary school system will do an in- 
justice to these backward children if it simply tries to 
make them normal by treating them Hke other children. 
They should be taught as far as possible in a small 
ungraded class in which they can get individual 



216 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

attention from a teacher of great skiU and experience, 
and can foUow a curriculum specially suited to each 
case. In this way only can we make the most of the 
personality and aptitudes of these children. Some may 
after a time be able to join the work of the regular 
classes. Those who go to work before they are able 
to complete the elementary school course should be 
required to give part-time attendance at continuation 
classes until they are sixteen or seventeen years of age. 
This will make a vast difference in the efficiency of 
their lives. 



CHAPTER XIX 

EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVE CHILDREN (CONTINUED) 

Next we come to the mentally defective children 
proper — those whose brain development is arrested 
at a certain stage before or after birth. The care 
and control of these have been a matter of great con- 
cern to all interested in social welfare. If neglected, 
they form a large percentage of our pauper, delin- 
quent, and criminal classes. It has been stated on 
good authority that they are increasing relatively 
to the normal members of our population. It was 
estimated by the Medical Department of the Board 
of Education that in 1913 there were about 36,000 
mentally deficient children in England, one-third 
of whom were under no control and were receiving 
no training. Many of these were growing up to be 
criminals or ne'er-do-wells, to become a permanent 
burden upon the community, and to end their days in 
gaols, workhouses, and asylums. This state of affairs 
if allowed to continue would be a menace to our civil- 
isation and a hindrance to social progress. 

But our legislators are now fully alive to the 
need of dealing with the problems connected with 



218 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

mentally defective children. Within recent years 
Parliament has passed the Elementary Education 
(Defective and Epileptic Children) Act in 1899, the 
Defective Children Act in 1906, the Mental Deficiency 
Act in 1913,^ and the Elementary Education 
(Defective and Epileptic Children) Act, 1914. 

Section 1 of the 1913 Act classifies the mentally 
defective into — 

(a) Idiots ; that is to say, persons so deeply 

defective in mind from birth, or from an 
early age, as to be unable to guard them- 
selves against common physical dangers. 

(b) Imbeciles ; that is to say, persons in whose 

case there exists from birth, or from an 
early age, mental defectiveness not amount- 
ing to idiocy, yet so pronounced that 
they are incapable of managing themselves 
or their affairs, or, in the case of children, 
of being taught to do so. 

(c) Feeble-minded persons ; that is to say, per- 

sons in whose case there exists from birth, 
or from an early age, mental defective- 
ness not amounting to imbecility, yet so 
pronounced that they require care, super- 
vision, and control for their own protection 
or for the protection of others, or that, 
in the case of children, they appear to be 

^ A similar Bill applicable to Scotland was passed in the same year 
— namely, the Mental Deficiency and Lunacy (Scotland) Act, 1913. 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 219 

permanently incapable of receiving proper 
benefit from the instruction in ordinary 
schools. 
(d) Moral imbeciles ; that is to say, persons 
who from an early age display some per- 
manent mental defect with strong vicious 
or criminal propensities on which punishment 
has had little or no deterrent effect. 

The education of all these was considered hope- 
less before the great pioneer work done by Edouard 
Seguin. His volume on ' The Moral Treatment, 
Hygiene, and Education of Idiots and other backward 
Children,' published in 1846, is probably the greatest 
work ever written on the subject. By idiots in the title 
of his book he means those whom we would now call 
feeble-minded. He said that by his methods ' Idiots 
have been improved, educated, and even cured ; not 
one in a thousand has been entirely refractory to 
treatment, not one in a hundred has not been made 
more happy and healthy ; more than 30 per cent, 
have been taught to conform to moral and social 
law, and rendered capable of order, of good feeling, 
and of working like the third of a man ; more than 
40 per cent, have become capable of the ordinary 
transactions of life under friendly control, of under- 
standing moral and social abstractions, of working 
like two-thirds of a man ; and 25 to 30 per cent, 
have come nearer and nearer the standard of man- 
hood, till some of them will defy the scrutiny of 



220 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

good judges when compared with ordinary young 
men and women.' 

For the idiot and imbecile, as defined in the Act 
of 1913, some improvement here and there may 
be possible, but no education in the ordinary sense 
of the term can be given ; and the educational 
authority hands over the responsibility for their 
supervision to a Local Control Authority, which 
is empowered by the Act to send them to an insti- 
tution or to place them under guardianship. As 
some one has said, these unfortunates remain 
children all their lives — children in intellect and 
will, though adults in stature and instincts. 

In the case of feeble-minded children on the bor- 
derland of normal development it is otherwise, and 
the 1913 Act lays upon local educational authorities 
the duty of providing for them special schools or 
classes in which, from seven to sixteen years of age, 
they may receive an education and training suited 
to their special needs. The educational authorities, 
especially those administering districts with large 
populations, are on the whole loyally doing their 
best to discharge their new duties. The education of 
the feeble-minded should be given, wherever possible, 
in open-air schools. It should consist mainly of a 
well-organised scheme of motor-training and manual 
occupations, especially gardening, correlated with 
speech and language training. By giving these 
unfortunate children such a training, it may reason- 
ably be expected, in view especially of the results 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 221 

obtained by Seguin, and by Madame Montessori in 
our own day, that the mental condition of nearly all 
will be improved, and that many will be trained to 
do work by which they may become in some degree 
self-supporting, even although they may never be 
able to take care of themselves without direction. 

Moral imbeciles as defined by Section 1 (d) of 
the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 must be carefully 
segregated from other children. Their vicious or 
criminal propensities would render them a source 
of danger to feeble-minded children. Nor must they, 
on the other hand, be placed in schools along with 
incorrigibles and truants. Because of their lack of 
self-control, and of their not having passed beyond the 
imitative stage of mental development, they would 
easily be led astray by their nimbler-witted and 
stronger- willed fellow pupils. Not much can be done 
with them, especially in pronounced cases, which 
fortunately are comparatively rare, and an insti- 
tution in which continuous care and oversight can 
be exercised over them for life is the only suitable 
place for them, and the only means of preventing 
them from becoming a criminal charge upon the 
community. 

In this country the Special Schools for physi- 
cally and mentally defective children are partly 
day schools, and partly institutions in which the 
whole of the life conditions of the children can be 
controlled. The Special Day School has many 



222 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

advantages, and is to be recommended for the 
majority of cases. It provides a proper division of 
labour and responsibility between school and home. 
It permits the child, while receiving mental and phy- 
sical training in the school, to enjoy the socialising 
influence of his home if it is not altogether bad. 
Special Day Schools are the best training ground for 
the deaf, the cripple, and the educable feeble-minded. 

In institutions, on the other hand, the children are 
separated from their family and friends, their move- 
ments are greatly restricted, and they are isolated 
and compelled to associate for the most part with 
those who are afflicted in like manner as themselves. 
And at the end of the school period the change from 
the artificial environment of the institution to the 
bustling life of the world is great and perplexing. 
Yet institutions are necessary for severe cases of 
mental and moral deficiency, and for all who need 
continuous care. In all cases in which there is any 
hope of improvement the cottage system of institu- 
tional life is the best. It reproduces many of the 
advantages of home life, it makes it easy to classify 
the children into suitable groups, it brings them 
into healing contact with nature, and it provides 
them with plentiful opportunities of outdoor work. 

The real crux of the problems connected with 
the treatment of the mentally defectives comes when 
they leave the Special Schools at the age of sixteen. 
Public control over them ceases just when they 
are most in need of supervision and guidance, and 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 223 

the results of years of effort are wasted by subse- 
quent neglect. Experience has shown that only 
a small proportion of even the higher grade feeble- 
minded become partially self-supporting. If the 
feeble-minded do not get protection and care at 
this critical period many of them fall victims to their 
tendency to drift into pauperism, immorality, and 
crime. Feeble-minded girls, if unprotected, propo- 
gate their kind, and are a special danger to the 
community. 

Several local educational authorities appoint 
After-Care Sub-Committees for mentally defective 
children with a view to promoting the well-being of 
former Special School pupils, and to assisting them 
to get suitable employment. Experience in this 
connection is proving that voluntary effort is not 
enough, and that compulsory education should be 
followed by compulsory registration and supervision 
of all mental defectives beyond school age. They 
should be released only to parents or guardians 
who are able to take care of them and be respon- 
sible for them. In every case in which it is thought 
necessary they should, in terms of Section 2 (2) of 
the Mental Deficiency Act, ' be sent to an institution 
or placed under guardianship.' 

The most suitable form of institution for mental 
defectives over sixteen years of age is probably the 
colony home, where the inmates can get employment in 
simple industries, and careful oversight and attention, 
and where their handing on the poison of feeble-minded- 



224 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

ness to offspring can be prevented. It has been stated 
that eighty per cent, of the feeble-minded are so by- 
inheritance. The following family histories inves- 
tigated by E. J. Emerick, Superintendent of the 
School for the Feeble-minded, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., 
show the necessity of preventing the marriage of 
the mentally defective, whether male or female. 



D-T~0 D 



Q 



r 



66iii66i4 



Blind 

lliis chart shows the effect of feeble-mindedness in the mother, while 
the father's family history is good. The result of this man's marriage 
with a feeble-minded woman is one blind child, four feeble-minded, and 
four normal children. I'he chart also shows a case of feeble-mindedness 
of three generations transmitted through the mother. 

NOTE. — In the genealogical charts, square indicates male, circle 
indicates female, plain squares and circles indicate normal mentality, 
black squares and circles indicate feeble-mindedness. 



D-rO O- 



■n 



^^h-^66^Eb 



i 



This chart shows clear evidence of a feeble-minded heredity. 
Reading from below upwards, the feeble-minded boy had on the maternal 
side a feeble-minded uncle, great uncle^ one feeble-minded second 
cousin, and two feeble-minded third cousins. On the paternal side 
there was a feeble-minded aunt 



EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 225 



Q 



Died in 
Infancy 



This chart shows the result of a feeble-minded woman being left 
without protection ; she had seven illegitimate children all feeble- 
minded. After her marriage she had a feeble-minded girl, and other 
three children who died in infancy before their mentality could be 
determined. 



Teachers of defective children should have a 
real bent and liking for this special kind of work, 
otherwise they will not attain high success in it. 
They should have a quiet and kind yet firm manner, 
and infinite patience and sympathy with the unfor- 
tunates they are teaching. It is desirable that they 
should have the same education and general training 
as ordinary certificated teachers, but in addition they 
should get a special training for teaching the kind 
of defectives among whom their work will lie. They 
must know what mental deficiencies mean, how they 
are caused, and the technique and methods of dealing 
with them in the best schools or institutions in the 
country. After entering upon their work they should 
be progressive and living teachers, and interested 
students of education, particularly of the difficult 
problems connected with their special work. As 

Q 



226 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

some one has said, ' We need forward teachers for 
backward pupils.' 

All the suggestions we have made in these two 
chapters will only reheve to some extent the heavy- 
handicap of those unfortunate children. If the sug- 
gestions are followed they will help to make the Hves 
of the children thus afflicted as secure and comfortable 
as possible, and to make the most of their working 
capacity for the common good. Many problems in 
connection with the classification and education of 
mental defectives call for further study and investi- 
gation. Above all, we require to know more about 
the causes of these deviations from normal mentahty, 
and the methods of preventing their operation. It 
may be found tKat certain forms of feeble-mindedness 
will be remediable when w^e know more about the 
skull, about disturbances of nutrition, and about the 
effects of tuberculosis, alcohoHsm, and immorality. 
These are problems that concern not only the educa- 
tional and medical professions but aU who are actively 
interested in social progress. The schools for defec- 
tives may thus become educational clinics in which 
valuable knowledge will be gained that wiU benefit 
not only the subnormal but the normal child. 



CHAPTER XX 

WIDER USE OF SCHOOL PLANT 

There is a growing opinion that our public elementary- 
school buildings and school plant are not utiHsed at the 
present time as fully as they ought to be for the better- 
ment of society. The reasons for this opinion are 
twofold. In the first place, it is maintained that as the 
buildings and their equipment represent a vast expendi- 
ture of public money they should not be allowed to 
stand idle for so much time when, outside of school 
hours, they might be used in many ways as centres 
for the social, civic, and cultural uplifting of the com- 
munity. In the second place, there is arising a broader 
conception of the scope of education. It is mainly, 
but not solely, concerned with the instruction and 
training of the young. Its functions extend to every 
stage and condition of life. Almost every scheme 
which has for its object the improvement of human 
conditions is, in one way or another, educational, and 
the schools as public property should be used in 
support of it, in so far as doing so does not interfere 
with the main purpose for which they were intended. 
We shall consider briefly in this chapter some of the 

Q 2 



228 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

more extended services for which the school plant 
might legitimately be utilised. 

For the sake of the children who are unfortunate 
in their home conditions, or who live in poor or over- 
crowded districts, the school playgrounds should be 
open for play, games, and drill out of school hours 
(see Chapter XV. p. 178), and some of the school 
buildings should be used for vacation schools. Per- 
haps no city is doing so much to develop the play- 
ground movement as New York. The writer visited 
that city in the summer of 1905 to become acquainted 
with what was being done, arid he found that the 
Board of Education of New York kept 110 school play- 
grounds open during the summer vacation from 1 to 
5.30 P.M. daily except on Sundays. There was an 
average daily attendance of 70,000 children, and over 
500 supervisors and teachers were required. 

In the schools utilised for this purpose, not 
only the playgrounds but the school libraries and 
some of the class-rooms were open. In one of the 
vacation playgrounds in the east end of the city 
there were 2000 children. At 1 o'clock a march was 
played, and the children fell into line and marched 
past and saluted the flag. Next, two patriotic songs 
were sung, then the order to break ranks was 
given, and the boys went to one side of the playground 
and the girls to the other. Kindergarteners amused 
the youngest children. Some of the young children 
shovelled and carted sand, and had doll parties. The 
boys and girls separately engaged in free play, such 



WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 229 

as swings and ball games. Some of the girls were 
taught dancing, and the boys had the use of the 
swimming pond for that afternoon. Boys were playing 
base-ball, some practising gymnastics, and in the roof 
playground teams of boys and a teacher were playing 
basket-ball. When the children were tired they could 
go, if they cared, to a room where quiet games were 
going on, or to the school Hbrary to read story or 
picture books. 

Seven of the vacation playgrounds were on the 
piers which jut out several hundred yards into the 
Hudson, and form the deep-water docks with which 
for miles the banks of that river are lined. The piers 
are occupied by covered stores, and the playgrounds 
referred to are on the flat roofs of these stores. They 
are delightful places during the sweltering heat of 
summer, as they are swept by cool breezes from the 
river ; and a splendid view of the traffic in the river 
channel can be obtained from them. 

Many children in the poorer districts of our towns 
have difficulty in finding amusement or pleasant 
occupation during the summer vacation, and they 
actually begin to long for the end of the holidays. 
There is no pleasant seaside holiday for them. They 
have to spend their holiday in the streets, often to their 
harm. To help these children, and to remove them 
from the demoralising influences of the streets, a 
movement has been started in this country in recent 
years to institute vacation schools in the poor and over- 
crowded districts of our large towns. The movement 



230 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

is of purely American origin. It was started in Boston 
in 1885, and now there is not a single large city in the 
United States without its summer vacation schools. 
In the summer of 1905 the Board of Education of the 
City of New York provided fifty-eight vacation schools, 
having in them 40,000 children, and requiring for their 
management 760 teachers. 

The first vacation school in England was opened 
in London in 1902 at the Passmore Edwards Settle- 
ment, Tavistock Place. ^ The credit of its initiation 
is due to Mrs. Humphry Ward, and the money for its 
support was subscribed by friends. The organisers of 
this school state the purpose for which it was started 
in a passage worthy of quotation for the inspiration 
of all workers in similar fields in the future : — 

' The school aimed at giving the children some- 
thing to do, in place of roaming listlessly about in 
street and aUey, with nothing to tempt them to 
action save the ever-present opportunity of mischief. 
Children such as we have cannot amuse themselves. 
They have little imagination or initiative, and, as a 
rule, unless acting under guidance, fail to give their 
desire for amusement and occupation suitable shape. 
They roam about, suffering from a peculiar childish 
ennui, and actually long for the return of the normal 
school days and the cessation of the wearisome 

^ Those desiring fuller information than is given here regarding 
Vacation Schools in England should consult vol. 21 of the Board of 
Education's JSpecial Reports on Educational Subjects. They should also 
read the pamphlet on The Play-Time of the Poor, by Mrs. Humphry 
Ward (Smith, Eider & Co.). 



WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 231 

holidays. The purpose of the school was to change all 
this. It sought to satisfy the hunger for occupation 
by setting the children something to find out, or 
something to do. It sought to care for the physical 
well-being of the scholars by carefully organised 
exercises. It sought to raise the children's ideal of 
morals and conduct by direct and indirect instruction. 
It sought to show the children that coming to know 
and learning to do are, in themselves, some of the 
truest of pleasures. It sought to afford pleasure chiefly 
to those children who were doomed, from one cause or 
another, to remain in London throughout the vacation, 
and so to go sea-less, fresh-air-less, and joyless.' 

This school has been so successful that it has 
been repeated every summer since it was started, 
and similar schools have been opened by voluntary 
associations in a few other towns. As a result of 
these successful experiments, the Education (Ad- 
ministrative Provisions) Act, 1907, allowed local 
educational authorities to establish such schools during 
the holidays or at any other time, and to give assist- 
ance to voluntary agencies for the same purpose. 
London County Council has, since the passing of the 
Act, opened several of these vacation schools. 

Curriculum is too formal a word to apply to the 
work done in a vacation school. To continue the 
same sort of instruction as in the elementary school 
would defeat the whole purpose of the vacation. The 
practical note is very prominent, and the tendency 
is to give no book lessons whatever in the school. 



232 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

The writer noted the following manual occupations 
going on at one or other of the vacation schools in 
New York : — woodwork, basketry, Venetian and bent 
iron work, fretsawing, whittling, cobbling, work in 
burned wood and leather, sewing, embroidery, crochet- 
ing, millinery, cookery, laundry, and other domestic 
work, such as laying the table, waiting at table, sweep- 
ing, dusting, scrubbing, washing dishes. Some of the 
boys were repairing broken house furniture they had 
brought with them. Some of the girls Avere cutting 
and sewing dresses, and trimming hats for themselves. 
In one school a nurse was giving instruction to the older 
girls in bathing, feeding, and care of babies, nursing 
the sick, and first aid to the injured. 

So far as one could see, the idea underlying all 
the manual occupations was not to give set tasks, but 
to lay hold of some interest in the child, and to enable 
the child to give expression to his own ideas. No 
time was spent in making fancy joints and sections 
in woodwork, but rather in making such things as 
boys want to make. So, too, with the girls, they were 
set to making dresses or hats or doll's clothes instead 
of learning a dozen different stitches. Physical 
training, music, and drawing also formed important 
parts of the work of these schools. A good deal of 
time was spent by the children out of doors, and was 
occupied in games, and excursions to the parks to 
interest the children in birds, flowers, and trees. 

Even from this brief outline of the work of vacation 
schools it will be seen that they may be made a valuable 



WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 233 

aid to social progress in poor and crowded communi- 
ties. They remove children from the evil influences 
of the street, they give them healthful and recreative 
instruction, and they prevent the holiday time from 
undoing to a greater or less extent the mental, moral, 
and physical work of the ordinary school. From 
the freedom with which they are conducted they 
afford great scope for trying innovations in education, 
and thus they may serve, to some extent, as experi- 
mental schools in which educators may have an 
opportunity of testing new ideas cautiously, without 
interfering with the work of the ordinary schools. 

The importance of the right use of leisure has been 
a common theme with sages and moralists of all ages. 
It was no less a person than Aristotle who said that 
the end of life and of education was the noble enjoy- 
ment of leisure. George Eliot in one of her books 
writes : ' Important as it is to direct the industries 
of the world, it is not so important as to wisely direct 
the leisure of the world ' ; and W. H. Taft, while 
President of the United States, said : ' It is in their idle 
moments that the young contract the habits that lead 
them downward, and it is in their leisure that they 
can make their character what it ought to be.' 

One of the most valuable outcomes of the education 
a person has received should be his desire and ability to 
occupy his spare time in such a way as will benefit himself 
and others. Tried by this test, our system of education 
is in too many cases found wanting, for the free hours 



234 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

of a considerable proportion both of youths and adults 
are filled with pleasures which are frivolous and 
harmful. This is causing anxiety to many observers. 
The Lord Chief Justice of England said recently that 
' second only to drink, the real cause of crime is the 
difficulty of finding healthy recreation and innocent 
amusement for the young among the working classes.' 

The school must do more in co-operation with the 
other institutions, especially the home, for the solution 
of this problem. Our continuation schools, public 
libraries, museums, art collections, dramatic societies, 
and courses of lectures and debates on literary, social 
and civic questions, are all educational agencies which 
are tackling the problem with a considerable measure 
of success. But unfortunately they often do not reach 
the very ones we need to influence. There should 
be provided somewhere in our educational system 
social and recreative activities, or what the Lord Chief 
Justice called ' healthy recreation and innocent amuse- 
ment for the young ' who have left school. The 
desire for play and for social intercourse is natural 
in young men and women ; we should frankly recognise 
it, and utilise it for educative purposes. If we fail 
to do this we shall help to drive the young, at a difficult 
and critical period in their lives, to the evil influences 
of the streets. To elevate recreational life and direct 
it into proper channels should be the guiding aim of 
every one interested in the young men and women of 
the working classes. 

America is taking the lead in connection with 



WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 235 

what is called the ' social centre movement ,' that is, a 
movement for using a number of schools in the evenings 
for supervised games, and dancing, and educative 
recreation. The social centres do not provide enter- 
tainment only. They have clubs for the discussion of 
social, political, and literary questions ; they have 
study and library rooms, and rooms for quiet games. 
But naturally the gymnastics and playing games and 
dancing attract most attention. 

In New York in the summer of 1905 there were eleven 
schools ^ used for the purpose, with an average attend- 
ance of about 2000 at each. The schools were open for 
eight weeks from 7,30 to 10 every evening except 
Sunday. In one of the schools visited there were over 
2000 youths up to about twenty years of age, and many 
parents were looking on. In various rooms playing 
games and dancing were going on, while on the roof 
there were hundreds of young men and women dancing 
to the music of a brass band. The entertainment 
closed at 10 o'clock exactly, with the singing of the 
patriotic song, ' My country, 'tis of thee. Sweet land of 
liberty.' No one who has visited these social centres 
and seen them at work can doubt that they remove 
thousands of youths from the temptations and dangers 
of the streets, and help to give them a love of pure 
recreation. 

Other American cities are doing work on somewhat 
similar lines. The United States Bureau of Education 

^ The writer visited the Social Centres in New York again in the 
summer of 1909 and found them still further increased in number. 



236 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

places such value on the movement that it proposes 
to send out bulletins describing the progress of social 
and recreation centres throughout the country. 

Britain has not been altogether behind in this 
work. For over twenty years there has been in 
London a society, presided over by the Countess of 
Jersey, with the object of providing in over eighty 
of the London County Council school buildings recrea- 
tive evenings ior the children attending schools in 
poor districts. About 1500 voluntary workers take 
part in the work, and the children engage in play, 
games, singing, and various recreative employments. 
Similar work is now being done in other towns in 
England. 

The success of work of this kind depends to a large 
extent upon the voluntary workers who are willing to 
direct and to take part in it. In this country there 
is generally no lack of men and women animated by 
the ideal of social progress and ready to labour in its 
service. 

As long as this is the case, it is not necessary that 
local educational authorities should themselves institute 
recreation centres, but they should readily grant the 
use of their buildings to accredited associations for 
the purpose. This is what is done by the Education 
Committee of London County Council, and it is yet 
another way in which the wider use of school property 
may contribute to social progress and to the general 
well-being of the community. 



CHAPTER XXI 

TEACHERS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

In the preceding pages we have considered some of 
the evils that are affecting so large a proportion of 
our people, and we have tried to show that, while it is 
futile to place exaggerated hopes on education, and to 
look to it alone to bring about the social millennium, 
it can do more than any other agency to remedy our 
social ills. Social progress cannot be secured by 
legislation alone, but by the slower and surer plan 
of educating the people, and of introducing into the 
schools the reforms we wish to introduce into the hfe 
of the nation. Education is, therefore, not the com- 
paratively simple thing it was even a few years ago. 
Nearly every moral and social movement at the present 
day is setting towards education. Like every function 
of the State, it is becoming more paternalistic, perhaps 
even, some would say, more socialistic in tendency. 
Our future welfare is so dependent upon the nurture 
and training of the young that the State cannot 
allow even the parents to deprive them of their natural 
right to education, and to protection from moral and 
physical harm. 



238 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

All this is placing heavier responsibiHties on the 
teacher ; it is demanding more highly trained intelli- 
gence and greater breadth of outlook. Every school- 
master should be a specialist, doing work that requires 
a special training and aims at specific results ; but he 
must also extend his vision beyond the school, and all 
the absorbing work and studies connected with it, 
and see the relation of his work to the throbbing life 
beyond the schoolroom. It was mainly because school- 
masters in the past, good and devoted men though 
they were, did not do this, did not cultivate wide 
interests, that there has come to be associated with 
teaching the narrowness generally connected in the 
public mind with the words ' schoolmaster,' ' dominie.' 
Dickens in ' Hard Times ' speaks of the matter-of-fact 
teacher as ' Thomas Gradgrind, Sir, a man of realities, 
a man of facts and calculations.' 

Every teacher should try to understand how educa- 
tion is related to other forms of social endeavour, and 
how education can really contribute to social betterment, 
and can be made one of the main instruments of society 
in realising its destiny. He should try to get a sense of 
the whole of which his work is a part, and see the relation 
of his work to that of other men. He should regard him- 
self as a social worker co-operating with others in the 
upbuilding of a higher life among the people, and in 
promoting a better civilisation. He should be domin- 
ated by a spirit of social service. He should have a 
keen sense of the obligation that rests on him to utilise 
to the utmost his special opportunities to counteract, in 



TEACHERS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 239 

such ways as we have indicated, the harmful influences 
of our social and industrial system, to diminish the 
human wreckage thrown up by it, and to attack the 
evils of society at their source. If a teacher is not 
constantly endeavouring to achieve these results he 
is not performing his full duty to the community. 

The school has as its chief function the mental, 
moral, and physical training of the child, but it is also 
one of the main instruments of society for securing 
its upward progress. Hence every teacher should study 
the problems of our social, civic, and industrial life, 
and the conditions to be met by society at the present 
time. During his course of training every teacher has 
to study psychology, so that he may know the principles 
of mental development. To this he should add a study 
of sociology that he may understand the laws of social 
development. Psychology and Sociology are the chief 
contributors to the Science of Education, and a know- 
ledge of them should be part of the professional equip- 
ment of every teacher. Sociology should decide to a 
large extent the suitable subject-matter of various 
curricula, and psychology should determine the ages at 
which the subjects should be taught, and the form of 
their most effective presentation. 

The teacher's course in the history of education 
during his training should be such as to lead him to 
see the school in its proper relation as one of the most 
potent factors in the social and industrial progress 
of the country, and the teacher as a social agent per- 
forming an essential work for society. There should 



240 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

also be introduced into his training, courses in social 
psychology and the sociological aspects of education. 
If this were done, the function of the school in society 
would be better understood, a deeper meaning and 
purpose would be introduced into the curriculum, the 
teacher's interest would be quickened, and he would 
perhaps be sustained by a livelier sense of his unique 
opportunities as a servant of society. 

Along with these theoretical courses there should 
go some practical training in social work. Our 
University Settlements and Social Settlements in 
the slums of our cities should have, in addition to their 
other work, educational activities carried on to a 
large extent by students in Training Colleges for 
Teachers. The scope for work of this kind is well-nigh 
boundless. A part of such a Settlement should 
generally be a Kindergarten, for hardly any other 
agency can do so much good for neglected children, 
or so much to influence the homes from which they 
come. It would be well if every large Training 
College could support by the voluntary contributions 
of its members a Kindergarten or Nursery School as 
an educational mission in a poor district of the town 
in which the College is situated.^ The students from 
such a College would be more Hkely to become enthusi- 
astic and public-spirited teachers, keenly ahve to the 
problems of society. 

^ This is no pious opinion. It is what is being done at the present 
time by present and former students of the Edinburgh Provincial 
Training College, see p. 152. 



TEACHERS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 241 

At the present time there is an absence of ade- 
quate facihties in nearly all our Universities for the 
study of social philosophy and social economics, and 
for the training of social workers whether as volun- 
teers or officials, and of those who desire to prepare 
for municipal or national administrative work. 
Every thoughtful observer must be struck by the 
wide variation both as to purpose and procedure 
in the many national and local schemes brought 
forward from time to time for social betterment. 
In the absence of such thorough study and prepara- 
tion as we have indicated, it is unsafe to attempt 
such social innovations and to try to guide the course 
of the underlying laws and forces at work. It should 
be one of the duties of a University to teach the 
principles of Social Science, to show how they may 
be applied to current social problems, and to extend 
our knowledge of the forces at work shaping society 
by ascertaining, collating, and reducing to law known 
facts concerning them. 

In several of our Universities this function of 
a University is recognised. For instance, London 
University has a School of Economics and Political 
Science ; Birmingham University has a School for 
Social Study and for Training for Public and Social 
Service ; Liverpool University has a School of Social 
Science and of Training for Social Work. These 
Universities issue Diplomas to the successful stu- 
dents in Social Science. In three of the Scottish 
Universities similar work is being done to a more 



242 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

limited extent ; in St. Andrews University there 
is a Lectureship in Sociology ; in Aberdeen Univer- 
sity a Lectureship in Political Science and Sociology ; 
and in Glasgow University a Lectureship in Social 
Economics, and a School of Social Study and 
Training under the directorship of a University 
Lecturer. 

Teachers are living in a time of special difficulty 
and responsibility, but they should be sustained by 
a growing sense of the power of education to remedy 
social diseases, to diminish the amount of wicked- 
ness, distress, and failure in life, to spread knowledge, 
self -helpfulness, and hope. No profession has more 
intimate or vital contact with the minds and souls 
of men, or has greater power to hasten social 
regeneration and social progress. No profession con- 
sequently is rising more steadily in public esteem ; 
and the time is coming when teaching will be, as 
Plato argued, the profession held in highest honour 
in the State. The rate of progress will depend upon 
whether the members of the profession are putting 
it to the largest uses in the service of mankind. 



CHAPTER XXII 

CONCLUSION 

The study we have made shows us that the diseases 
of society are not inevitable. We have the know- 
ledge and the power to overcome them if we have 
the will. But the task is not one that can be accom- 
plished quickly or easily. It involves nothing less 
than the difficult problem of preventing ills in 
society, instead of seeking to cure them after they 
have arisen. Just as in medical science prophy- 
lactics are supplanting therapeutics in coping with 
physical ills, so in social science we are aiming more 
and more at attacking the diseases of society at 
their source rather than relieving them after they 
have manifested themselves. We are accordingly 
extending and developing the work of the various 
preventive agencies of which the chief is education. 
The proper extension and wise exercise of the 
functions of education are at the root of social 
progress. 

Within the last few decades the duties of local 
educational authorities have been greatly extended on 
the social side. These authorities have been charged 



244 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

with the responsibility of the medical inspection and 
treatment of school children, and of the feeding of 
necessitous children. The Poor Law Authorities 
have failed to get at the causes of destitution in 
children and to prevent their operation. In the 
same way, the administration of Industrial and 
Reformatory Schools by the Police Authorities — 
the Justices of the Peace in counties, and the Muni- 
cipal Councils in boroughs — has failed to cure, far 
less prevent, delinquency in the young. 

Consequently there is now an almost universal 
consensus of opinion that the entire responsibihty 
for the care and training of children (except the invalid 
and the imbecile) of school age should be placed under 
one authority — namely, the Educational Authority.^ 
In this way, much ineffectiveness and wasteful over- 
lapping would be prevented, and an opportunity 
would be given of enforcing parental responsibihty. 
With its great teaching force, its doctors, nurses, care 
committees, and attendance officers, our educational 
system has unrivaUed means of dealing successfully 
with the physical, moral, and economic disabihties 
that start in childhood and persist through hfe. 

The problem of finding the money to maintain 
the educational system of the future is not an easy 
one. The extensions and reforms we have sug- 
gested certainly mean a considerable increase in the 

^ A Departmental Committee on Reformatory and Industrial Schools 
in Scotland in its Report issued in May 1915 recommended that the 
administration of these schools should be transferred from the Scottish 
OflSice to the Scotch Education Department. 



CONCLUSION 245 

expense of national education. But even then the 
expenditure will be only a small fraction of what 
we are spending (not unnecessarily, as recent events 
in connection with the great European War have 
shown) on preparations for war in times of peace. 
We have immense national resources, ^ and with wise 
economy in other directions it should be possible for 
us to spend more on education. 

Present-day conditions demand a greater develop- 
ment than ever before of the powers of the individual, 
and therefore a larger expenditure on the provision 
of opportunities for the purpose by the State. 
* Modern life makes imperative greater collective 
action, and increases the duty and responsibihties of 
the State. Greater relative and absolute portions of 
the national income must be devoted to collective 
betterment. The school is one of the chief instru- 
ments by means of which the duty of the State in 
modem industrial society is discharged. Not th© 
destruction, but the conservation, of individual 
development and welfare is the aim.' ^ 

Economists and students of taxation are pointing 
out new and important sources of revenue which 
would be partly available for the increased expen- 
diture on education. Moreover, there should be 

^ The late Sir Robert Gitfen, one of the greatest statisticians of 
his day, said : ' There is enormous wealth to draw upon with a gross 
income-tax income of about 1000 million^ and probably an amount 
not coming under the Income Tax of 2000 millions.' We do not 
suggest, of course, that all the additional money required for education 
should come from this source. 

2 Education and Industrial Evolution, by F. T. Carlton. 

r2 



246 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 

a readjustment of the grants to education from 
imperial and local sources. The burden on local 
education rates has been greatly increased by new 
duties imposed by recent legislation, and it must 
be relieved. In addition to this, various economies 
and reforms should be carried out. The working ex- 
penses of the educational system must be diminished 
by the simplification of the machinery of local and 
State administration and inspection. This is par- 
ticularly true of Scotland with about 40 Secondary 
Education Committees and 970 School Boards, with 
their small army of officials — clerks, treasurers, and 
auditors. Large sums, too, could be made available for 
modern needs by the revision of educational endow- 
ments which have been diverted from their original 
purpose, or are no longer suited to present-day 
requirements. 

Any net increase in the total expenditure on 
education will, we may be assured, be more than 
counterbalanced by the nation's reduced bill for 
drink, crime, ill-health, and destitution. It wiU be 
more than compensated by the increased productive 
capacity of our people due to their better health and 
greater vigour, their increased skill, their higher moral 
qualities, and the prolongation of their average 
working life. 

The war at present devastating Europe will for 
generations increase the importance of education as 
a factor in social progress. After the war solicitous 



CONCLUSION 247 

care of public health will become a cardinal feature of 
social policy, and more attention than ever will be 
paid to everything connected with the health of the 
young. Increased economy of industrial force, too, 
will be necessary. Thousands of workers trained in 
manufactures and commerce have been lost in the 
war, and the prosperity of the country will only be 
restored by the increased efficiency of those wh© 
remain. We must give the children, who will take 
the place, in a short time, of the workers who have 
fallen in the war, a longer and better education, and 
a more practical training — a training that will develop 
their mental powers, and be at the same time a real 
preparation for life. The gap between the elementary 
school age and the threshold of manhood and woman- 
hood must be filled by an adequate system of con- 
tinuation education, including more thorough trade 
and technical education. It is the children at present 
being educated in the schools who will bring to fruition 
in the next generation the possibiUties of the coming 
peace. 



INDEX 



Acquired characteristics, 64, 69 

Act, Defective Children, 218; 
Education (1906), 203, 209; 
Education (Administrative Pro- 
visions), 182, 186, 200, 202, 
231 ; Education (Scotland) 
(1908), llo, 137, 182, 186, 
200 ; Elementary Education 
(Defective and Epileptic 
Children), 218 ; Employment 
of ChHdren, 52, 170; Mental 
^Peficiency. 218, 223 ; National 
Insurance, 192 

Adams, John, 74, 120 

Adjustment to environment, 76, 
83 

Advisory committees, 131, 136 

Apprenticeship, decay of, 146 

Arithmetic, 97 



Carter, Rev. Henry, 10, 14, 19 

Charity, 4, 15, 22, 199 

Children, backward, 214 ; diseases 
of, 50, 168, 183, 185, 188, 192, 
197, 204 ; eniploj^ment of, 51 ; 
mortality of, 158, 204, 206; 
under five, 148 

Civics, 109 

Classes, size of, 67, 94, 121 

Commission, Roval, on Poor Laws, 
4, 14, 19, 34, "112, 115 

Compulsory continuation educa- 
tion, 126, 135, 140 

Consultative Committee, 123, 125, 
129, 149 

Continuation education, 53, 80, 
112, 120, 122, 134 

Creches, 151, 159, 164 

Crime, 7, 11, 39 



Babies' classes, 157 
^ Backward children, 214 

Bergson, 4.6 

Binet, 214 

Blake, William, 6, 36 
•-^-^Blind, education of, 211 

Bloomfield, Meyer, 114, 118 

Bolton, F. E., 31 

Booth, Charles, 4, 17, 43 

Borstal system, 13 

Bosanquet, Mrs., 14 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 27 

Browning, Robert, 29 



Carlton, F. T., 159, 245 
Carlyle, 45, 108 



^P- 



^^ 



Darroch, Professor, 46, 196 
Day nurseries, 86, 151, 159, 164 
Deaf and dumb, 212 
Dealey, J. Q., 33, 59 
Defectives, 38, 208, 214, 217 ; 

education of, 47, 93, 208, 217 ; 

teachers of, 225 
Destitution, 3, 14, 33 
Development, genetic, 54 ; telic, 

56 
Dewey, Professor, 104 
Dickens, 36 
Donaldson, Professor, 68, 72 

EcoLES Gardiennes, 164 
Ecoles Maternelles, 163 
Economic reform, 58 



250 



INDEX 



Edinburgh, continuation schools 
in, 112, 116, 131, 132, 134, 139; 
day nurseries in, 151 ; educa- 
tional information and employ- 
ment bureau, 116 ; kinder- 
gartens in, 152, 166, 240; 
medical inspection in, 186 ; 
play centres in, 178 ; supple- 
mentary schools in, 139 

Educa,tio:i, aims of, 93 ; con- 
tinuation, 53, 80, 112, 120, 
122, 134; defective, 42, 122; 
expense of, 244 ; freedom in, 
48 ; individuality in, 48 ; 
physical, 49, 101,' 130, 172; 
practical, 43, 45, 79, 83, 87, 
96, 107, 120 ; pre-trade, 107 ; 
self -activity in, 45, 48 ; supple- 
mentary, 80, 107, 109 ; tech- 
nical, 143 ; trade, 128, 141 ; 
vocational, 43, 79, 89, 107, 
120, 126; width of, 84, 87 

Education and environment, 76 ; 
and health, 49, 166, 182, 1 89, 196, 
206 ; and heredity, 61 ; and 
home, 44, 161, 203 

Educational handwork, 102, 232 ; 
reform, 92 

Emerson, 84 

Employment of children, 51, 170 

English, teaching of, 97 

Environment, 28, 37 ; adjustment 
to, 76 83 ; and education, 76 ; 
physical, 28, 30, 32 ; pressure 
of, 33, 34, 39, 85; spiritual, 
29, 30. 31, 32 

Evolution, genetic, 54 ; telle, 56 

Expenditure, educational, 244 

Exploitation, 8 



EjiEELE-ivnNDED, education of, 

218, 220 
Feeding, free, 163, 196 
Fouillee, Alfred, 1, 171 
Froebel 78, 83, 172 



Galton, Sir Francis, 23, 38, 63, 

214 
Games, 101, 172, 173, 176, 228 



Genetic development, 56 
Geography, teaching of, 98 
George, Henry, 37 
Germany, continuation schools 

in, 127, 133, 137, 139, 141 
Guidance, vocational, 113 
Gymnastics^ 101, 179 

Half-timers, 51, 170 
Hayward, F. H., 40, 72, 73 
Health and education, 49, 166, 

182, 196, 206 
Heredity, 22, 37, 61,72, 224; and 
education, 61 ; and environ- 
ment, 37, 40 ; mental and moral, 
23 ; social, 40, 61 
History, 100 
Home and education, 44, 164, 

187, 189, 203 
Home, H. H., 24, 65, 67, 73 
Hygiene, school, 171, 185, 190 

Individualism, 1 
Industrial revolution, 43, 58, 89 
Infant mortality, 158, 168, 204 
Instincts, hereditary, 25 
<i,,,Jrfistitutions for defectives, 222, 

Intemperance, 8, 191 
Inter-Departmental Committee, 
38, 49, 52, 113, 125, 170, 179, 

182 



James, Professor, 84 
Juke family, 27 

Kindergartens, 86, 94, 103, 

15L 164, 204, 240 
Knowledge, value of, 92 

Leisure, use of, 233 

Literature, 82, 108 

Locke, 166 

London, day nurseries in, 151 ; 
kindergartens in, 156 ; medical 
inspection in, 182 ; playgrounds 
m, 176 ; recreation centres in, 
236 ; underfeeding in, 196 ; 
vacation schools in, 230, 236 



INDEX 



251 



Machinery, effects of, 58 
Mackenzie, W. Leslie, 50 
Malnutrition, 1S8, 196 
Manual training, 102 
Mark, Thiselton, 104, 105 
Medical inspection and treatment, 

51, 182 
Montaigne, 166, 175 
Montessori method, 162, 221 
Montmorency, J. E. G. de, 86, 

139 
Mortality of children, 158, 204, 

206 
Mothers, schools for, 204 

Newmajt, Sir George, 50, 188, 

198 
New York, vacation schools in, 

228, 232, 235; social centres 

in, 235 
Nursery schools, 161, 240 

Open-air schools, 192 
Open spaces, 177, 178 
O'Shea, M. V., 35 
Overpressure, 169 

Parasitism, 8 

Parental responsibility, 203 

Parochial relief, 4 

Pease, J. A., 144 

Pestalozzi, 78, 83 

Physical deterioration, Inter- 
Departmental Committee on, 
38, 49, 113, 125 

Physical education, 49, 101, 130, 
172; training, 179 

Plato, 8, 33, 68, 166. 181, 242 

Play, 101, 172, 175, 177, 228 

Play centres, 177, 178 

Playgrounds, 175, 228 

Poor Law system, 13 

Poverty, 3, 14, 33 

Practical education, 43, 45, 79, 
83, 96, 107, 120 

Pragmatism in education, 88 

Reform, educational, 92 
Remedies, imperfect, 11, 244 



Remedies of social diseases, 11 
Ribot, 24, 70 
Rousseau, 166, 173 
Rowntree, B. Seebohm, 3, 4, 43 
Rural schools, 76, 77 



Sadler, M. E., 129 

School feeding, 196; furniture, 

95, 194; hygiene, 171, 185, 190 
Schools, city, 77 ; infection in, 

168, 169, 185; open-air, 192; 

rural, 76, 77 ; special, 221 ; 

wider use of, 227 
Schools for mothers, 204 
Scotch Education Department, 

80, 111, 129, 179, 200, 244 
Seguin, Edouard, 219 
Self -activity, 45, 48, 83, 88 
Settlements, social, 240 
Slums, 5, 85 
Slums, children in, 5, 35, 85, 

158, 174, 175 
Snedden, Da\-id, 46 
Social centre movement, 235, 236 
Social diseases, 1, 11; causes of, 

3, 19, 21 ; remedies of, 11, 22, 

243 ; results oi, 10 
Social centres, 235; hereditj% 40, 

61, 68; pathology, 1; reform, 

57 
Social progress, conditions of, 54 ; 

teachers and, 237 
Society as an organism, 2, 28 
Society, solidarity of, 2 
Sociology, teachers and, 239 
Smith, Georo[e Adam, 7 
Special schools, 211, 221 
Spencer, Herbert, 54, 70, 167, 180 
Supplementary education, 80, 107, 

109 



Teachers, artisan, 132 ; con- 
tinuation school, 132 ; duties 
of, 126, 175, 237; training of, 
132 
Teachers and social progress, 237 
Teachers of defectives, 225 
Technical colleges, 144; educa- 
tion, 143 



252 



INDEX 



Telle development, 66 
Tennyson, 36, 39 
Thomson, J. A., 71 
Thorndike, E. L., 139 
Tolstoi, 47, 89 
Towns, overcrowding in, 34 
Trade education, 128, 141 
Tuberculosis, 183, 188, 192 
Tutorial classes, university, 145 



Underfeeding, 196, 198 
Universities and Social Science, 

241 
University Tutorial Classes, 145 



Vacation playgrounds, 228 
Vacation schools, 228, 230 
Vice, 7 
Vocational education, 43, 79, 89, 

91, 107, 120, 126; guidance, 

112, 131 

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 19, 70 
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 174, 178, 

230 
Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, 5, 

16, 19 
Weismann, 70 
Workers' Educational Associatiod, 

145 



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